One Wish
by Corvo Kage
Summary: This story follows the relationship between MC and Sayori, or in this case, Nick and Natalie. It has the story-line of DDLC with different character names, and a more 'American modernization' to it.
1. Chapter 1

_(Hey all, first I'd like to say thank you for choosing my story. It's the first I've written. I found some great stories that have inspired me to make my own, and I hope you enjoy it. This is just something small I'd like to give a shot. I already have about 3 or 4 chapters, 20,000+ words, worth of material to publish, but I figured I'd start with one chapter to begin with, and see how the public reacts. I'm very open to constructive criticism, and would love to hear from anyone who has either any ideas for my stories or ideas for my writing. If it kicks off, and you'd like to see more, I'll release more chapters and continue writing, but if it doesn't go anywhere, that's okay too. Just to clear up any confusion, this story revolves around the relationship between what would be Sayori and the main character, but with different names. She still has depression, but the Monika character has no influence on it, and the characters in the story must overcome their inner conflicts and problems together. There is no outside force with supernatural powers or anything of the such acting on the characters. This is just something fun I wanted to try out myself. Thanks again, let me know what you think!)_

*beep-beep-beep-beep-beep*

I rolled over and smacked the top of my alarm clock. 5:30 AM. It was Tuesday morning.

"Ughh, why do I do this to myself?" I groaned as I got out of bed.

I went through my normal routine of getting ready in the morning. I shaved, took a warm shower, brushed my teeth, got dressed, combed out my hair, you get the gist of it. It was what I did every morning before school, no need to be over descriptive of it.

I went downstairs into the kitchen to make breakfast.

 _There is nothing here whatsoever, I seriously need to go to the store soon_ , I thought to myself. I settled for a simple bowl of off-brand and bland cereal. I figured that would leave me enough time to get the homework I had neglected to do last night out of the way anyways. School was about a ten-minute walk from my neighborhood, and considering school didn't even start until seven thirty, I had lots of time to myself before I even had to leave.

A few minutes pass, and I finish up the homework I needed to do in record speed. It was 5 classes of homework worth. I didn't care if it was correct or not. I did the bare minimum. As long as its passing, or only due for completion, then at least it'll be completed. They may be advanced classes, but I'm not a genius either.

I checked the time. The clock read 6:47. I still had more than half an hour before I even had to be out the door. I seriously need to start waking up a little later and give myself more time to sleep. I like to plan things out and give myself lots of time to do things in case I got behind, or if I had homework, or really anything. I have a strong belief in Murphy's Law. Anything that can go wrong, WILL go wrong in many cases. I guess its just a way to keep myself prepared for the worst. Maybe I should stop thinking like that.

I sat down on the recliner, kicked back, and watch the news like an old dad, waiting for time to go by.

I went upstairs and picked up my bag, took one last look in the mirror, and went out the door. I turned around and locked it behind me before going on my way. I probably got about six or seven houses down the street before I heard a familiar voice, followed by fast footsteps down the road behind me.

"Hey, Nick!"

I turned around.

It was Natalie.

Natalie was my neighbor, and arguably my best friend for as long as we were even able to remember. We used to spend so much time together when we were younger, but ever since high-school we never talked as much as we did. I still walk to school with her almost every day, and we have fifth period study hall together this year, so its not like we don't talk at all, rather we just don't hang out like me used to everyday.

Natalie was a shorter girl, maybe five-two in comparison to my five-ten self. She had shorter hair, coming to rest right at her shoulders, which was normally a little messy, and was a mix of blonde, brown, and weirdly a tinge of pink or red, I don't really know which. Let's just say its dirty blonde. She always wore this little red bow on top of the little mess. It wasn't a bad mess, at least not to me. It was more what made her herself. She was skinny, but not anorexic.

"Oh, hey. Woke up late again, huh?" I asked

"Hehe, yeah… I stayed up too late trying to finish my homework, and when I woke up, I was behind. I didn't want to skip out on breakfast, I could never do that!" She said.

Despite her petite figure, Natalie loves to eat. I'm convinced her favorite thing, other than being happy, is food.

"Believe me, I'm aware." I teased.

"What's that supposed to mean?!"

I laughed lightly. "Nothing Nat, I'm just messing with you."

Although its pretty common for girls with the name Natalie to be called Nat, she never really liked it when people call her Nat. She would always yell at people who did so, but she never yelled at me for it, so I just assume she doesn't mind if I do it. She gives me a look like she wants to say something, but stays quiet. We walked for about half a minute before she brings up something I was hoping she wouldn't mention.

"Soo… have you thought about joining any clubs?"

 _Dammit, here we go._

Clubs at our school were unique. They were after school and sometimes even went into the summer to give students something to keep themselves busy. They have presidents and vice presidents to keep the club running and to give members things to do and come up with ideas. Teachers weren't involved unless the students asked them to be. I had thought about a few, but never actually desired to be in one. Natalie had already advertised to me before that she had become vice president of a club she was in, but I never really payed much attention to it because I wasn't interested, nor did I really care. It was probably a bad thing of me to do as her best friend. I think she said it was… the English Club?

I couldn't lie to her.

"Well, not really. I looked at a few, but clubs aren't really my forte."

"Which ones did you look at?" She looks at me with those blue eyes of hers, giving me her full attention, completely interested in what I had to say. It made me feel guilty.

"I looked at the movie club, the football, club, and heck even the hacky sack clu-"

"There's a hacky sack club?!" She interrupted.

"Heh, yeah, there is. I figured I'd get some sort of reaction out of you after you heard that."

"So, you didn't sign up for any of them?"

"No, why do you ask?" Although I knew exactly why she asked.

"Well-"

The outdoor bell rang, and we suddenly realized we were at the gate of our school. I was so involved in the conversation I hadn't even realized how close we were, let alone where we were. I do that a lot, I get distracted way too easily.

"That's the late bell, if we don't hurry we'll be late for homeroom." I say.

I feel like I could've made a really sappy Saved by the Bell reference there, but I'm not that lame. Or… am I?

I started off, but she stops me. "Wait, I wanted to ask you something!"

"It's alright, just tell me at fifth period." I say, dodging her question. At least for now.

"O-okay." She looks disappointed.

"Don't worry, I'll see you in five periods." I head towards homeroom, she does the same.

My first classes go by as you'd expect any high-schooler's classes to go, extremely boring and terribly slow. But, my study hall was here, fifth period. I walked in, signed in, and went to my seat, where I saw Natalie in the seat next to mine. Seats are arranged in pairs because it's the science lab, but when there's not a class going on in a specific period, its used for study hall. Natalie isn't sitting in the seat she was assigned, but the teacher lets us sit anywhere we want now since she knows all of our names and doesn't need a sheet for attendance. Natalie pats the seat next to her, obviously excited to talk about clubs.

How fun.

I take my seat. "How was your classes?" I asked.

"They were alright I guess, I slept through most of them though, I just can't wait for lunch!"

I knew the question was going to pop up eventually, so I figured id get it over with, like ripping off a band aid or getting a quick shot.

"So… you wanted to ask me something?"

Her eyes widened, and a smile went from ear to ear. "Oh my gosh, thanks for reminding me! So you said you hadn't picked a club yet, right?"

"Mhmm"

"Well… I was thinking," she continued, "you know, if you hadn't decided yet, and maybe if you wanted to, you could… maaayyybe join the club I'm in?"

There it is. The inevitable. "Oh, I remember you saying something about that. You're the vice president of your club, right? What was it… th- "

"The Literature Club!" she chimes in.

"Ah, right…"

"Would you like to join?" she asks again, with big blue puppy eyes.

"I'll have to get back to you on that one. I don't know what clubs I want to join. And literature? I never really considered myself a fan of it, let alone writing. Or even if I'm good at it for that matter."

"Hehe… well, uh… that's the thing…" she presses her two index fingers together, her signature 'I did something I probably shouldn't have' pose, or rather her nervous pose.

"What is it?"

"I kinda, maybe, definitely told the other members I'd bring you the first day we start this year… which is today… and that you're interested…"

"You didn't!"

"I-I did." She gives me a guilty look, but when she meets my gaze she looks away from me.

"Natalie! You shouldn't go speaking for people!" I shake my head with my hand over my face.

"W-well, Naomi said she would bake cookies to celebrate a new member because we haven't had one in a while, and she's a really good cook and-…" she trails off.

She looks back over at me and seems… odd. I mean, she did feel guilty about what she did, but it kind of caught me off guard at the same time.

"… I'm sorry Nick."

I sighed. "It's alright I guess. Look, I'll stop by for today and I'll at least have a cookie, okay?"

"Really? Thank you so much!" She wraps her arms around my chest and squeezes me, which was both unexpected that she hugged me, and was stronger than I thought it would be.

"I didn't say I would join! I just said I would stop by with you, don't get your hopes up too much, I don't want to let you down."

She lets go of me, and I feel like I can breathe again. "It's better than a no!" She gives me a smile from ear to ear. "I'll come find you after eighth period, that way we can go to the club together, okay?" she says.

The bell rings.

"Alright." I tell her, and she's already out the door, waving me goodbye as if she had to leave before I could change my mind. Does she even know what class I have eight period, or where it's even at? I thought to myself. Well, she does have my number, so I guess she could just text me and ask if she needed to know. I decided not to worry about it. It's pretty surprising just how happy one person can be.

The rest of my classes are over before I know it, quicker than expected but faster than I had hoped. I walked out of my home ec. class to see Natalie standing outside the door.

"Ready to go?" she asked.

"Wow, you actually knew what I have 8th period? I underestimated you." She proudly smiles. "But yeah, as ready as I'll ever be." I say sarcastically.

"Aww come onnn, it'll be fun!" She says.

"If you say so."

We go upstairs and walk down the halls to a classroom I'd never been in before. Why did it seem weird that the club was in a classroom? They must've gotten permission to use it from whatever teacher taught in here. It was room 200. We stop in front of the door, and Natalie peers in just to make sure she was at the right room. Did she do this every time? She confidently swings open the door.

"Hey everybody, he's here!"

I looked around the room. To my surprise, there were only three other people in here, excluding Natalie and myself, and they were all girls. I immediately recognized one of the members. Her name was Marissa. She was in my third period class. She was really pretty, smart, and popular. I don't know too much else about her considering I've never really talked to her before. She approaches Natalie and I with her hand out.

"Hello, you must be Nick? I've heard a lot about you."

Heard a lot about me? I exchange the greeting and shake her hand. "That's me. You're Marissa, right? I recognized you from third period."

"Yep, I'm the Literature Club president. I'm so happy you could join us!"

"The feelings mutual, Marissa." I give her a shy smile, she smiles back.

"How about I introduce you to the other members? You obviously already know Natalie," Natalie giggles and gives me a little wave, I wave back with a smile. "these are our other two members, Ada and Naomi."

Ada, the taller one, is reading a book at her seat, she looks up and waves to me. "How do you do?" she asks.

Naomi is in the back of the classroom, rummaging through the closet. She whips around and locks eyes with me, giving me a heinous look, like I'm some sort of criminal.

"Ugh, you brought a boy?" she snarls. That's awful inviting.

"Naomi! Be nice." Marissa says. Naomi looks away and continues whatever she's doing in the closet. "Don't worry about her, she's just not too fond of change. She's actually really sweet once you get to know her. She can even be kind of cute!" She says, looking back at Naomi mockingly.

"I am not cute!" She snarls. I feel like it would kind of fun to mess with her, but ill save that for another time.

"Whatever you say," They probably tease her all the time. "Any ways, go ahead and make yourself at home, we're going to get the preparations ready. Natalie, would you join me?" says Marissa.

"Of course!" Natalie follows her to the back of the room, where they retrieve some things from the closet. I take a seat next to Ada, where I figured I should at least try to start becoming acquainted with the girls.

"Whatchya reading there, Ada?" I ask

She jumps and gasps a little bit.

"Ehe, sorry, didn't mean to scare you. Must be getting pretty involved in the story, huh?"

"Oh, no it's okay!" She marks where she was and closes the book. "But yeah, I was at the climax of the story. It's called The Haunting of Hill House. It's really good so far."

"The climax? I'm sorry if I interrupted you. Do you want me to leave you alone, so you can continue it?" I ask

"N-not at all! I'd rather talk to you anyways," she pauses, "that may have come of weird sounding, I-I meant- "

"Relax, it's cool. I didn't misunderstand you."

"Oh, good." "She sighs.

"Haunting of Hill House? Sounds like a scary book. Do you like horror stories?"

"Oh, yes. Very much so. It's my favorite genre. They're so intriguing! I love how one moment, a character can seem like a completely normal person, and then the next the author throws you for a loop and reveals a deep dark secret. Isn't it interesting?" She goes on after that, to which I lose focus. I assume she likes to read based on how she just explains it to me. "I-I'm sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I?"

"No, it's okay, you're just passionate about reading, it's cool to hear you talk about what you enjoy doing." I reassure her.

"Really? I'm glad…" She sighs and closes her eyes, holding a hand over her chest, which seemed like a weird gesture, but I didn't think too much of it. "… I actually have a second copy of the book at home, if you'd like to, I could give you this one so you could read it and so we could discuss it?" She holds the closed book out towards me." O-only if you want to! You don't have to if you aren't interested in doing so!"

"Ada, relax, you aren't giving me a bad impression. I'd love to. It's fun to share your interests with other people, I know. But won't you lose your place?" I ask

"It's okay, I'll just remember the page number. Actually, better yet, I'll reread it, so we can talk about it together on the same page!" She's getting really excited over this. It's kind of cute.

"Alright. Sounds like a plan!" I say, "How about tonight we each read a chapter or two, and tomorrow we can discuss it during club time?"

"That's perfect! We could even read the next few chapters together if we have time!" She pauses again. "I-If you'd like…"

"I'd like that, Ada." I smile at her. Did she just blush? She smiles back.

"Alright everybody!" I hear Marissa announce across the room. "Everything is ready! Come take a seat!"

Ada hands me her book, I slip it into my bag, and we go to take our seats. The girls pushed the desks together to make a table, three on one side and two on the other. I'm not too comfortable with everyone yet, so I take a seat on the end, with Natalie to my right.

Naomi marches over with a large dish with tin foil draped over the top of it. That's right, I completely forgot about the cookies! I thought to myself. She pulls the tin foil off to reveal a batch of cookies that look similar to the ones with the colored icing that you'd buy at Walmart, except these ones were obviously homemade, and looked a lot more appetizing. They had pink and yellow icing on top, decorated to look like little colored cats. This is going to be the most girly thing I've ever ate in my life, I thought.

"Wooooaaaahhhh, these look amazing Naomi!" Natalie says. I swear I can see her drooling.

"Thanks, I made them all myself!" She says proudly.

"Don't you mean you made them all for Nick?" Marissa said slyly, with an evil, teasing smirk.

"Ugh, I-I did not!" She snaps back, raising a fist at her, although I'm ninety-nine percent positive she would never hit her.

"Yep, sure you didn't. Any who, lets dig in!"

"I'll go fetch us some tea." Ada says. She gets up and travels to the side of the room, where I only just realize there's a tea kettle, with stuff to make tea. Where do they get all of this stuff?

She comes back, gives us all cups, and takes her seat. Everyone grabs a cookie, but I can't help but notice Naomi staring at me, as if she were waiting for me to take a bite and judge her baking, Iron Chef style. I look for the best spot to take my bite, and then do so. It really wasn't bad at all. Actually, it was really good. I'm no judge when it comes to sweets, since I don't eat them that often (if at all), but let's just say it's the best cookie I've had in a long time.

"Wow Naomi, these are seriously good! The best I've had in a while!"

"Really? Y-You think so?" She pauses "I mean, of course they are! Like I need you to tell me!... but, thanks." Geez, learn to take a compliment.

We eat our cookies and drink our tea. God, that sounds weird. The more I look at this situation, the more I realize this is literally a tea party and I'm the only dude. Although, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ada looks over to me, "So Nick, what type of things do you like to read?"

Uh oh. I was kind of hoping I wouldn't get that question from anyone. I'm not really the strongest reader. But I don't have to lie about that, do I?

"Um… well I don't really read too much. I guess… comics are pretty cool. If that counts?" Naomi shoots her head up and looks over at us like she wants to say something but stays quiet. I'm the only one who probably notices.

"Eheh, not much of a reader I guess… but that's okay." She says nervously

"Hey, I never said that couldn't change!" I give her an awkward smile.

That's when I realized something that probably should've been brought up.

"And also, I just realized something…" I said

"What is it, Nick?" Responds Marissa.

"Well… I never really said I would join this club yet. I was actually just visiting today to see what it was like."

They all stopped what they were doing and stared at me. I got a small reaction from everyone.

A "O-oh…" From Ada

A "What?..." From Marissa

A "N-Nick…" From Natalie

And a "Hmph." From Naomi

They were all looking at me with sad expressions. I was defenseless against these girls.

"…Alright, it's decided. I'm joining the Literature Club.

Suddenly, they all lit up again. "You had me so worried, I'm so happy!" Natalie stand up, pulls me up, hugs me, and starts jumping up and down.

"Thank goodness…" Ada says

"If you only would've came for the cookies I would've been super pissed about it." Naomi crosses her arms and huffs away from my gaze.

"Well then, it's official. Welcome to the club!" Marissa smiles at me.

You know, this may not be half bad. All these girls are really nice. Well… three of the four are nice. And they all seem pretty fond of this club. Maybe I can learn to enjoy it as much as they do.

The plate of cookies was finished, and Naomi wrapped it up and put it in her bag.

"Hey everyone, I have one more announcement before we pack up. Be prepared to start getting into the literature aspect of the club tomorrow. Now that we have everyone, we need to start preparing for the festival that's coming up in a few weeks." She said

We all start packing up. Ada is the first out the door, I wave her goodbye. Natalie approaches me.

"Hey Nick, since we're both already here, do you want to walk home together?"

"Of course, I don't see why not."

"Okay!" She gives me a cheesy grin.

We walk out, followed by Naomi and Marissa. We said our goodbyes and made our way out the main entrance.

Natalie and I were on our way home. I figured I would start our conversation.

"Well that was pretty fun, don't you think?" Pretty bad conversation starter. If I could roll my eyes at myself I would.

She keeps looking forward, spacing out.

I wave my hand in front of her face.

"Natalie? Are you alright?"

"O-oh, I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"Nothing. I was just saying today was pretty fun, don't you think?" I asked again

"Oh yeah, sure was!"

She was quiet again. Something was off about her. She obviously had something on her mind.

"Is there anything you want to talk about?" I asked

"Oh, no everything's alright."

"Okay, I was just checking on you. You didn't seem yourself, so I thought I'd ask. I'm sorry if I was being nosey."

"It's okay! Thanks for checking. I'm okay. See?" She gives me her signature smile.

"Alright, if you say so." I smile back and playfully punch her arm. "I'm really glad you convinced me to join. Everyone seems nice, and the club seems like it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm excited to go back tomorrow."

"I'm glad you like it. I'm excited to go back tomorrow too. Hehe…" She says.

We walked for a little longer in silence. I didn't want to pressure her anymore into what was on her mind. Despite what she said, it was obvious something was up. I had to reassure her.

"Hey Nat?"

"What's up?"

"If you ever need anything from me, or if you ever want to talk about something, or if you even need to vent, you can talk to me about it. You know that, right?"

"Heh, yeah, I know. You worry about me too much. But… thanks." She smiles at me.

We were outside her house now. I walked her to her door, which was normal considering we went to each other's houses every day when we were kids. I pretty much could let myself in whenever and it would be okay. Sometimes I actually do, too. Her mom was practically my second mom. She does advise me after all.

 _Mom and Dad…_ I thought. I should probably explain that situation.

I'm only eighteen, but I live alone in my house. My parents… aren't with us anymore. They liked to travel, and took a flight out to California two years ago. Well… the plane crashed. Nobody survived. So… that explains that. It's kind of hard to talk about. I don't have a job, but my parents had a very large amount of life insurance, in case something bad would ever happen to them so I would be taken care of. I don't even want to know what they were paying for it. They fully owned our house, it was paid off. So, the life insurance money is what I'm living off of right now, which was surprisingly a gratuitous amount of money. I just live off of the house I've grown up in, and use the money to pay the bills, make payments, and buy things I need, like clothes, groceries, and more. I don't want anyone to think I'm rich, but I'm sitting comfortably. After the funeral arrangements, I had about four-hundred thousand left over. I'm not happy about it at all obviously because no amount of money will bring my parents back, but I'm very thankful at how smart they were to do such a thing… Even though they're gone, they still take care of me.

Their passing contributed to a spiraling depression in my life. Aside from their deaths, I never really had any real friends, besides Natalie. Everyone and anyone I tried to be friends with either used me for my money, my car, or anything else. They'd back stab me or talk crap about me behind my back, it just wasn't worth it to surround myself in people who were going to hurt me. It was the last thing I needed. I had self-harm issues for a while, but nobody knows about it except for the few friends I thought I had. Considering I have to wear a blazer to school every day, my arms are always covered. I don't do it anymore. I'll obviously never be over my parent's deaths, and I'm still going to cry over them, I don't know anybody who would be over it, but I haven't hurt myself in a long time. I wouldn't say I'm one hundred percent okay, but I'm not going to do anything stupid. I'll be alright. I've made it this far, haven't I? Mom and Dad would have wanted me to go on. I do it for them.

Mrs. Patterson, Natalie's mom, is my go to. She advises and looks over me. She was my mom's best friend. Like I said before, I've known her for so long and we've been through so much she's pretty much my second mom. She treated me like the son she never had. She doesn't watch over me as much as she used to anymore now that I'm an adult. Well, at least legally. But I still go to her when I need help or advice.

I made it to my front door. I stepped inside, set my stuff down, and made dinner. I went to bed at a relatively earlier time than other kids so I wouldn't be tired at school, so I ate a little earlier than everyone else as well.

After I cooked and ate, I had a little downtime, so I decided I'd start reading into Ada's book, The Haunting of Hill House. I'm not much into reading anything other than comics, but she seemed pretty passionate about this book, so I'll give it a shot. What's the worst that could happen? Worst case scenario I have to read a book that I'm not interested in, but all of our English classes through the years made us do that all the time anyways. I wanted to do this for her. I need to have a way to connect with these girls, so I can be more comfortable around them. Who knows? I may even turn out liking the book. Not that I'm jumping into this expecting to dislike it.

It probably took me about twenty minutes to get through the first chapter. It actually wasn't bad, so I went ahead and read the second chapter as well.

After reading the two chapters, I slipped the book back into my bag, and just entertained myself until it was time for bed. I meal prepped my lunch for tomorrow so I wouldn't have to wake up as early as I normally do, and I rented a movie I had never seen before. I'm gonna try not to over-describe my boring, eventless evening. It's a bad habit of mine to do that.

Right around ten, I brushed my teeth, changed into some more comfortable clothes, and hit the hay. Our second day of Literature Club was tomorrow and, I can't believe I'm saying this, I was actually excited for it. I'm looking forward to seeing what Marissa has in store for us, although I should probably be worried considering she said we'd be getting into the more literature related aspects of the club. I guess it isn't always going to be eating cookies and drinking tea.

I closed my eyes, and drifted to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

_(Wow, it's been awhile. A long while. 4 months to be exact. I never expected this to get anywhere, and I still don't, but I've been thinking about it a lot recently and decided to upload more of the story since I already had so much of it made. On top of that, the longer the story is, the more likely it is to be seen, since some people like to look for longer stories, at least that's what I normally do. It was just a thought. Anyways, I'll stop rambling. I'm glad to be back, and hope to be much more on top of this. Thank you for being patient, and I hope you enjoy. As always, I'm very open to any kind of criticism anyone wants to throw my way.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

I woke up the next morning before my original alarm went off. I was twelve minutes before it, but I wasn't as tired as I thought I'd be so I just disabled it and got up to do my morning routine. _So much for giving myself more sleep_ , I thought.

Before I know it, it's time to head out. I got to the front of Natalie's house, but she wasn't outside yet, which was unusual for her. I shot her a text.

 _Are you up_? _I'm outside your house._ I text her.

I got a text back almost immediately.

 _I'm sorry! I'm running a little behind. I'll be out in one minute._

Well, at least she's up and moving.

Surprisingly on time, about a minute later, Natalie comes outside, hair messier than usual, bow off center, bag hanging off one shoulder, she's breathing really heavily.

"Geez, are you alright?" I grab her bag strap and puller her closer. I reach out and straighten her bow out, and pull her other strap up over her other shoulder so she isn't straining herself. "What did you do, run all over the place getting ready?" I say with a little chuckle.

"That's…*huff*… exactly…* huff*… it…" she barely gets out.

"Alright, take a second to catch your breath. We have time, it's alright." I reassure her.

After a minute or two, she's caught her breath and we start walking. I give her a water bottle from my bag (I always bring one to school. I didn't like to drink from the water fountains if I didn't have to). She gratefully accepts it.

"Hey Nick?"

"What's up?"

"Thank you…"

"For what?"

"For… everything just then…" she says slowly

I gave her a little playful shove. "Don't mention it Nat. I'm just looking out for you."

"No, really. I almost made you late, and you still were so nice to me. You shouldn't worry about me so much."

I was kind of confused. "Why would I be upset with you? I was just helping you out. Isn't that what friends are for?" I give her a little smile.

She kept gazing forwards. "I guess so. I just don't want to be a nuisance…"

"You aren't a nuisance! Absolutely not! You should never think that. I know you would do the same for me." I can't believe she would even think such a thing. This wasn't like Natalie. Something is up and she isn't telling me. I remember how she was a little distant yesterday, so I decided not to mention anything. At least, not at the moment.

"If you say so." She said shrugging a little.

It's silent for a little bit, so I decide to try and break it.

"So, what do you think we'll be doing in the club today?"

"I'm not too sure. Probably something to do with writing." She responds

"You don't know? Aren't you the vice president?" I hope that didn't come off sounding too rude. I didn't mean it to be.

"Yeah, but Marissa does most of the work and keeps it a secret from me. The only time my 'vice president' title really shines through is when I'm helping her with a project or she needs me to do some dirty work for her."

"Seriously? What do you mean by 'dirty work'?"

"I don't know. Like making pamphlets, or coming up with ideas for flyers to advertise the club. Just stuff like that." She says

"Do you like doing that stuff? I mean, it doesn't sound too entertaining, but, do you find enjoyment in doing that stuff?"

"No." She said blankly

I give in. I can't take when she does this.

"Natalie?"

She looks up at me. "Hm?"

"What's wrong? Something is certainly bothering you. You're running behind, you don't seem yourself, somethings off. Am I reading too far into this? Are you okay?"

She doesn't say anything at first, but shakes her head and replies. "Y-Yeah, I'm okay!" She smiles.

 _Hmm._

"I know I said it yesterday, but I'd like to reiterate. If you ever want to talk about something, I'm always open ears. You know that, right?"

"Seriously Nick, I'm fine. Y-You worry about me too much, hehe…"

 _There's that stutter again…_

"Okay. If you say you're alright, I'll take your word for it." I say.

She smiles at me again, as if she's trying really hard to convince me she's really alright. Although I know she's hiding something, I smile back. I'll get to the bottom of it.

Before we know it, we're at school, we say our goodbyes, and go our separate ways.

The school day is average. Nothing really to talk about. The end of the day comes quicker than expected, and it's time for clubs. I walked out of eighth period, and there was Natalie to walk me to the club again. I have to say, it was nice to have something to look forward to at the end of school. I didn't do anything, with anyone for that matter, after school. So, it was cool to get to see Natalie at the end of the day. It felt like we were spending more time together, just like the old days. _Just like the old days?_ I thought. _God, I'm mentally 50._

We roll up into the literature club and set our stuff aside.

"Hey everybody!" Natalie beams to the other members. They all greet her as well, and say hello to me too. Aside from Naomi, who ignores me and does her usual thing in the back of the room.

I decided today would be the day I see what's up with Naomi, and see if I can get closer with her like I have with Ada. See what her interests are, that kind of thing. We had a little bit of downtime before we got into the swing of things. I make my way to the back of the classroom.

"Whatchya doin' there?" I ask

She jumps, not expecting me. "Jesus! What, do I have to put a bell on you?!"

"Eheh, sorry about that," I ask her again "what're you doing in the closet back here?" I decide to hold off on a 'come out of the closet' joke. I'm not close enough to her nor do I want to look lame.

"It's stupid, but if you want to know… I keep my comic collection here in this room. But every day, Marissa moves it to the top shelf, and I can't reach it! Like, why does she have to do that?" She crosses her arms and huffs.

"Comic collection? I don't think that's stupid. I have a collection of my own. I like to read comics too."

She turns around, interested. "Wait… really? I thought I heard you mention something about comics yesterday…"

 _So, she was listening._

"Yeah. Why do you keep it in this room and not at home?"

"My dad just thinks it gets in the way. H-He doesn't like me having it for whatever reason." She seems antsy talking about it for whatever reason, so I decide to change the subject.

"Huh, that's odd. Anyways, do you want me to get the collection down for you?" I say

"No, I'm not helpless! I'll do it myself thank you very much!" she scowls at me, but it quickly fades. Maybe I'm making some sort of ground here.

I put my arms up in a 'surrender' like manner. "Alright, alright."

She pulls the teacher chair over, which didn't seem like the brightest idea considering it had wheels, and the student chairs didn't. The only difference was the teacher's chair was taller, which is probably why she picked it over the others. Now that I look at it, she really is one short girl. Shorter than Natalie, and she's like five-three or so. Naomi had to be five-one at best.

She climbs on top of the chair and reaches for the collection. There was seriously a lot of comics in that box. Like, a LOT. It looked heavy, especially for someone of her stature. She pulled the box out and held it above her head. "Got it!" she exclaims.

But, she started tipping back with the box in her hands. She was about to fall.

She fell back with a little yelp, like someone just stepped on a small dog (accidentally of course). I realized she was probably gonna get hurt pretty bad without something to break her fall. I jumped forwards behind her. I have no idea how I did it, but I managed to catch her, and stay standing. I was holding her wedding style, like how a groom would hold his bride on their honeymoon night, walking up the stairs. She was really light, which was no surprise considering how skinny she was. It was like something straight out of a movie.

I looked down at her. She still had her eyes closed like she was bracing for the worst, and the box still in her hands. She opened her eyes and looked up at me with an odd expression, she was staring at me, her mouth slightly agape, taking in the fact that I saved her from a pretty bad injury. I didn't think much of it, but it made me feel kind of good about myself honestly. I made sure she was alright, and stood her back up

"Wha- What just happened?" She looks around, and realizes what happened. "I-I, Y-You-"

"That was seriously amazing!" Marissa yelled from across the room. I only just now realized everyone was staring at us. Marissa and Ada with dumbfounded expressions. Natalie was simply just… watching? It was an oddly emotionless stare. "Naomi, Nick just saved you!"

"Wh-what?" She pauses, and looks around. She recollects her thoughts. "I didn't need saved, I would've been completely fine on my own!" Another pause. "... but… t-thanks…I- I probably could've gotten hurt…" She finally admits

If I'm not at least at a better standing with her, then it's hopeless. "Glad you finally admitted it, dummy." I say sarcastically. "But you're welcome. I'm just glad I was in the right place at the right time."

" Do not call me a dummy, dummy." She shoots back. She punches me in the arm, surprisingly hard. It made me flinch. I flinch at everything. It's a long story. I'll explain later.

I rubbed my arm. She gives me a confused look, almost like she was concerned. But she stays quiet. "Ow… geez Naomi."

Well, after that fiasco, I realized that I still hadn't gotten to discuss the book with Ada. I went over and approached her, who surprisingly was nose deep in her phone and not a book.

"Hey Ada, ready to talk about the book?" I asked.

"O-Oh, of course! How far did you read to?" she asked

"I had a little bit of time yesterday, so I read both chapters one and two, is that alright?"

Ada assures me it's alright, and that she re-read up to chapter three. We discuss the book, the characters, and the developing plot as it ensues in the book. She really is passionate about it, because she has much more input to the conversation then I do. It's mostly her just stating things that I had thought the same about, and that I would agree with her to. Aside from a few small comments, I swear the most things I even got to say were, "Mhmm", or "Me too", or "You're absolutely right". But, she was enjoying herself, and even though I may make it out to seem the conversation was unpleasant, it wasn't, and I actually enjoyed myself. The book is picking up a little too, and it's pretty entertaining. I made sure to remind Ada that she has good book taste. I think she liked hearing that. We probably went on for about ten minutes before Marissa announced it was time to get into the club. We didn't have enough time to start reading together, so we both agreed on two more chapters for the next day, and went from there.

"Alright everyone, so do you remember how I said we would start getting into the more literary stuff of the club?-" She's cut off.

"Sorry to interrupt, but where'd Natalie go?" Naomi pointed out

I looked around the room. She was gone. I can't believe I hadn't noticed it, I must have been so involved in my conversation with Ada that I hadn't even heard her leave.

"Oh, she said she wasn't feeling too well, so she said she'd be going home for now to make sure she wasn't getting anyone else sick if she did happen to become sick." She replied.

She seemed fine earlier. Was I really that oblivious to it? Natalie's mom wasn't home often, she traveled a lot for work. I think I remember Natale saying her mom was in Chicago for a few weeks for her work just recently. If she was sick, then there wouldn't be anyone there to take care of her. I decided after Marissa's announcement I would leave and go check on her. I needed to make sure she was okay.

"Oh. Okay, I hope she feels better. Go ahead. Sorry to interrupt." Naomi said

"It's alright. I already let her know about what I'm about to tell you guys, so she's caught up," Marissa continued, "So I thought, what a better way to practice literature, than to write! For tomorrow, and every day after that, I'd like everybody to write a poem, and bring it in. Then, we can exchange poems and share with each other, then give criticism to the poems. How does that sound?"

"W-wait… sharing?" Ada shakily asks

"You're saying… we'll be reading each other's p-poems?"

I stayed silent.

I was as dumbfounded as the other girls. Poems?! I was bad enough at writing as it is. I couldn't write a paper for the life of me. But… Poems?!

"Aww, come on guys, it won't be that bad. Nobody will be rude about it, just a little poem, that's all. I'm not asking you to write a four-page essay." She concluded.

I figured if somebody didn't jump in and agree with her, nobody would. I didn't want Marissa to feel bad, because honestly, it wasn't a terrible idea, I just wasn't necessarily looking forward to it. I took the initiative.

"I think what Marissa is asking for is fair, it could be fun guys!" I may have said that with a little more enthusiasm than I had hoped.

"W-well, if everyone thinks so, then… I'm in." Ada added

"Fine, I'll do it, but don't think for a second that your poems are gonna be better than mine, you two!" added Naomi, turning towards me and Ada.

"It's settled then!" Marissa says with a smile, "Also, Nick, we started a group chat for the literature club. I'm going to need your number so I can add you in it."

"Alright, cool. Here." I recited my phone number to her.

"With that, it looks like everything I needed to go over is gone over! Don't forget to write a poem for tomorrow's club." She announces.

I started to get my stuff together, when unexpectedly, Naomi stops me.

"Hey Nick?... Could you hold up a second?"

I didn't have a lot of time, I needed to go see how Natalie was doing, but I decided to see what she wanted. I didn't want to be rude. Marissa stops, and waits for us, but Natalie politely waves her off. "Go ahead Marissa, I'll lock up tonight." She give us a thumbs up, and quickly waves us out. She had headphones in.

I was alone in the room with Naomi. It was kind of… awkward. It was only my second day, I didn't expect to be alone with anyone yet. I wasn't taking it the wrong way though, don't get me wrong.

"What's up?" I asked.

"Well… as a thank you… I wanted to give this to you." She hands me a copy of one her comics. It was a Japanese one. They called this a manga over there. I had seen some before, but I didn't own any before.

"A manga?" I read the title aloud. "Dragon Ball Z Volume 1. 'The World's Greatest Team'. I know of this! I only saw the anime, I've never read any of the manga though. It was one of my favorite shows growing up!"

"Yeah… I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to it. I've already read the whole series, so I figured I could give you that one to start off with. But I'll need it back, I'm not gonna let you keep something from my collection, no way. But hang on to it for now."

I take it as a compliment. "Wow, this is awesome Naomi, thank you!"

"Also…" She goes on. "I figured… you know… maybe we could read it together if we ever have free time during the club… or even discuss it… if you wanted to."

Wow, I didn't expect that from Naomi. Was she nervous?

"You know, if I didn't know any better I'd think you're nervous right now." I say with a smirk.

"I-I am not! It's just… cool to know someone with the same interests as me…" she admits.

"Haha, I'm just messing with you. I'd like to read it and discuss it with you when we have time, if that's what you'd like."

"Yes!" She exclaims "…I-I mean, whatever. Yeah, it's fine." She pauses, but suddenly gets an angry look on her face. "You better keep that mint condition. If I find a single crease in any of the pages, you're going to be in huge trouble!" She punches me in the arm again, in the same spot. I flinched at it.

"There it is again. You flinched." She rubs her chin and studies me. I rub my arm where she punched me. "Is everything alright at home?"

"What?" That was surprising. Where did a question like that come from? She doesn't know about my home situation. "Yeah, why do you ask?"

She sighs. "It's nothing. I'm gonna get out of your hair now. I'll see you here tomorrow, alright? Read the first chapter of what I gave you, we'll talk about it."

"Alright. I have to go check up on Natalie anyways." I slip the manga into my bag, carefully, remembering Naomi's threat. "See you tomorrow."


	3. Chapter 3

_(I had to re-upload chapter 3 after finding a LOT of spelling errors and whatnot. I'll make sure to be on top of that from now on.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters within this story.**

As I was walking home, I passed by Natalie's house. None of the lights were on. _That's odd, she normally has every light in the house on…_ I thought. Was she even home? I don't know where she would've even gone without a car since she doesn't drive. I stopped by my house to put my stuff in my room, and changed into more comfortable clothes. I put on joggers and a long sleeve shirt that was little thick, like a sweatshirt without a hood. It was colder outside anyways. I was comfortable, but still looked at least presentable to Natalie.

I walked over to her house, and knocked on her door. I waited a little bit, and knocked again. This time, there was stirring. The door opened, and there was Natalie. She was wearing a pair of red shorts and a gray long sleeve shirt, her usual leisure wear. Her hair was messy as usual, with her bow on top. But something was off… her eyes were red. Was she crying?...

"O-Oh, hey Nick…" She finally said.

"Hey…" I looked her over, then back behind her, into the dark house. "can I come in?" I asked

"Yeah, sure." She says.

I let myself in and flip a light on, taking a seat on her ever-familiar couch in her ever-familiar house. I always liked her house more than mine growing up, it was bigger, and older, but you couldn't tell from just a quick look. I was always envious when I was younger. Natalie gets a can of our favorite soda from the fridge, and offers me one, I gratefully accept.

"So, is everything okay? You left early from the club today. Marissa said you didn't feel good, and I remembered you were home alone for a while so I figured I'd come check up on you." I continued "And when I got here, all of your lights were out."

"Yeah, I'm okay. I just didn't really want to be there today, I wanted to get home and relax. That's why the lights were off, I was just sleeping!…"

I looked her over again, but this time got up from my seat and looked her over up closely.

"W-what're you doing?.." she asked.

"Shh, just hang on." I took my thumb and traced under her eye. It was puffy, and still a little wet. Not wet enough to be able to tell from sight, but wet enough to be able to tell from touch. She had been crying. She locked eyes with me, but quickly glanced away, guiltily smiling a little. She knew she'd been caught.

"Natalie, you've been crying,"

"N-No I haven't!..." She won't look me in the eye.

"Please just tell me what's wrong Nat, you're worrying me…"

"I-I just miss my dad, that's all!"

"You never even knew your dad, Nat."

Her dad died when she was 7 years old, from what I've heard was a motorcycle crash. Natalie never knew him because he was never around. He was a walk out. She's never said a word to him in her life, let alone knew him.

"I-…"

"Look at me."

She turned her gaze towards me finally.

"What's bothering you? Please tell me so I can help you."

"It's just… complicated. Can we talk about it tomorrow? It's kind of late…"

"It's 5:30 Nat."

"U-um…" she trailed off

I gave in. "Alright, look. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. I'm not going to force you into it. I just remember how much you were there for me in my time of need, and thought I'd return the favor. It's what friends do, right?"

"…friends…" she says quietly

"What?" I ask

"Nothing! I was just thinking… I could watch Friends on Netflix or something to cheer myself up, t-that's all! Hehe."

I don't think she's seen a single episode of Friends in her life.

I have no idea what to even do at this point. She's making this really hard. I wish she would talk to me and not hide it, but if she doesn't want to talk about what's bothering her, I'm not going to force it from her, it may only make things worse.

"Do you have any games? Or do you want something to eat?" I asked

She perked up when I said eat. Typical Natalie.

"I'll take that as a yes?" I chuckled a little.

"…yes please." She says quietly.

I look around in her kitchen. She didn't have a whole lot, but I see she has everything to make grilled cheese, so that's what I go with.

"How's grilled cheese sound?" I ask.

She gasps, starting to seem a little more like herself. "I love grilled cheese!"

"Alright, I'll whip it up for us. Find something good on TV, alright?"

She nods, and I get to work on making dinner for us. I was no chef, but in knew my way around a kitchen. Plus, it was grilled cheese. Who didn't know how to make that? Well, besides Natalie.

After a few minutes, it's all ready. I set her plate down in front of her on a tray she set up so we could watch TV. She thanks me, and has pretty much half of it gone before I even sit down with mine yet.

"Geez Nat, you must've been pretty hungry, huh?"

"Yeah. I haven't eaten since lunch!"

That was normal timing for anybody, but I decide not to tease her about it.

She put on Friends on a random episode. I think she was trying to live up to what she said earlier, but I'm not buying it. We finish up, I take her plate for her, and she thanks me again. I take our dishes over to her sink, and start cleaning her dishes for her. She had a messy lifestyle, her room was always dirty, and if her mom wasn't home to do the dishes they would just pile up. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but I was always the one to clean her room, not her. I didn't mind cleaning them for her though.

"You don't have to do all of that Nick, you already made me dinner!" she said

"It's alright, I don't mind. Plus, it was just grilled cheese, it's no big deal." I say, giving her a smile.

She sits on a stool by the island in the kitchen. She sighs. "You shouldn't worry about me so much Nick…"

"There you go again. Why do you think you're not worth my time? I like spending time with you. Even if it's something as little as this." I held up the plate I was washing off, laughing.

"I just don't want to be a nuisance to you…" she says

"You aren't, I promise." I reassure her.

She was quiet for a while.

"Hey Nick?"

"What's up?"

"Let's just say Ada asks you to walk home with her… would you walk home with her? Or would you still walk home with me?"

What was that? That question kind of caught me of guard. Where did that even come from?

"I wouldn't just ditch you for Ada, silly. I'd at least ask you to come with us, that way I could still get to walk home with you." I hoped I gave her the right answer.

"O-oh. Okay." She said. She was quiet again.

After a while, I finished up the dishes and checked the time. It was nine-o-clock.

I turned around. "It's getting a little lat-" I stopped myself. Natalie was sleeping at her seat.

She looked peaceful, I didn't want to disturb her sleep. I turned off the TV, and dimmed the lights. I walked over and nudged her, she didn't budge. I picked her up and carried her upstairs to her room. I kicked the door open lightly, flicked the light on, and caught glimpse of her room. Messy as always. I set her down on her bed, and covered her up. I figured I'd pick up her room a little for her while I was here. I already did her dishes, I may as well do her room. I quietly picked up her dirty clothes, straightened out her desk, and tied up her trash. Anything I could do to make her life a little easier.

I finished picking up her room, and walked to her door. I took one last look at her. She really did look peaceful, despite the fact she was crying, and refused to tell me what was wrong. She was a really pretty girl. She was just my type actually. I think I looked for Natalie in other girls, but could never find anyone just right, because there was only one Natalie. There's no way she likes me anyways. I turned up her thermostat a little bit (she was always cold), flicked off the light, and shut the door. I went downstairs, and wrote a note to her:

 _Hey Nat, you fell asleep at your seat while I was doing the dishes, so I took you to bed and straightened out your room for you. I'll see you tomorrow morning!_

 _~Nick_

I went back upstairs, got a piece of tape from her desk, and taped it to her little coffee table next to her bed. She really was out like a light.

I shut her door again, and went downstairs. After looking everything over, I went home.

I went upstairs, straight to my room, and got ready for bed.

I really hope Natalie will be okay. Truth be told, I was going to see if she wanted to spend the night at my house, like we used to do when we were kids, so I could be sure that she would be okay. But, she already fell asleep, so I just put her to bed. I'll be sure to check on her tomorrow morning. But, for now, it's time for bed.

I woke up with a pain in my neck, I slept in an awkward position. But, I woke up to the sound of my alarm clock, so I was right on time. I got ready for school.

By time I was ready, I shot Natalie a text.

 _Are you up and ready to go?_ Delivered

No response. That wasn't like her. She always responded fast. I didn't think too much of it, but double texted just to be safe.

 _I'm on my way over._ Delivered

I was starting to get nervous. She was crying before I came over last night. And that weird question, what was up with that? I had to get over there.

I went out the door, neglecting to even get my backpack. I was at her door in ten seconds flat. I knocked on the door.

No response.

I waited a minute, and tried again.

"Natalie?" I called out. No answer.

Something was wrong. I could feel it. It's not like she was sleeping and didn't hear me. She was a heavier sleeper, but every time I texted her, it woke her up. It said delivered, her phone wasn't dead.

…

No.

NO.

I started panicking, pounding on the door. "Natalie! Please, open the door!" No response.

She wouldn't do anything stupid, would she? No way, That's not Natalie. This had to be something else, I was just over thinking it. Maybe she was just mad that I cleaned too much for her. That was it.

I ran home to my house. I grabbed my spare key to her house (remember how I said I could let myself in and they'd be okay with it? I literally had a key) and ran back over to her house. I unlocked the door and let myself in

"Natalie?" I yelled. I didn't hear anything back. I ran upstairs. I swear I had to hear something hit the floor upstairs when I opened that door. It had to be my imagination.

I was at her door. It was still closed. I couldn't just open it, could I? What if she was getting changed or something? You don't just open the door to a girl's bedroom unexpectedly.

No. That wasn't it.

I slowly opened the door to be safe, I could see her bed, but not her. "Nat? Wake up, silly." I called out. Nothing.

I opened the door the rest of the way.

"Nata-"

What I saw next, is something that I will never forget, that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

It was Natalie. But, she wasn't her normal self. She was hanging by her neck from a thin frayed rope, dangling from the banister on her ceiling. Her face was pale, and her eyes didn't have that naturally beautiful blue color to them. They were faded. Almost gray. There was the kicked over chair from her desk set below her. She still had the same clothes on from last night.

 **"OH MY GOD, NATALIE!"**

"…n-…"

She was still alive. She started clawing at the rope.

I looked around the room. There was a pair of decently sized scissors on her desk. I grabbed them, and squeezed as hard as I could with those things on the rope. She came down, and I caught her.

We were on the ground. I looked at her, she seemed so lifeless.

"Stay with me, Nat. Please… not you too. I can't lose you. Please don't leave me."

She tries to speak, but can't. She starts gasping for air.

"Shh, everything's okay, breath, you're going to be okay, calm down." I was reassuring her, but I was shaking in the process. I was in tears. Her neck was bruised, and bleeding on the surface where the rope was.

I pulled out my phone, and called the paramedics. Natalie shook her head no, but I wasn't taking no for an answer, she needed medical attention.

I looked back down at her, she was crying. I was crying. I sat her up, and I hugged her. I just sat there and held her. This girl I was holding right now was almost not with me anymore. I held her like it was the last time I'd ever get the chance again.

"W-Why, Natalie?" I barely got out. I ran my hand through her hair. I was so afraid of losing her. "Why didn't you say anything?..." I pushed away to look at her again. I looked her right in the eyes. She reached back out, and pulled herself back into me, crying more into my shirt. I held her again, running my hand down her hair and onto her back. I pulled what was left of the rope from around her neck.

By that time, the paramedics were here. There was a man and a woman. They came right in and found us upstairs. I realized I had left the front door open. Natalie grabbed my left arm. She was shaking her head. She didn't want to go with them on the stretcher, that was obvious. But she had to.

"You're not getting through this without medical attention. You have to. I'll be with you, I won't leave. I promise." I assured her.

They put her up on the stretcher, and supported her head.

I followed them out to the ambulance. They let me ride in the back with them and Nat.

We started heading towards the hospital. When I woke up this morning, I didn't think I'd be in the back of an ambulance, let alone because of Natalie. She reached towards me, and caught my attention. She was holding out her hand. I took ahold of it, and held it there. I made sure she knew I was there with her, and she wouldn't be combating this alone. Her hand was soft, but scratched a little on the finger tips from prying at the rope when I found her. I felt so terrible for her.

My mind was racing through everything that had happened this morning. What, the hell, was going on? I knew she was upset about something. I tried to get it out of her, I tried to help her, but she refused to tell me. I didn't think it was that serious… but…

 _Suicide?_ The word echoed in my head…

In what felt like forever, we made it to the hospital. She was taken to the emergency room. I waited outside for her. I realized the girls from the literature club would probably be worried about where we were. I texted the group chat.

 _Hey everyone, sorry to be so frank, but something serious came up today. Natalie and I won't be at school, as you've probably already seen, and we won't be at the club today. I'll get back to you as soon as possible._

I shoved my phone back into my pocket. I didn't have time to focus on that. The only thing on my mind was Natalie.

After some time, a doctor came out and asked if I was the one who came with Natalie. I said yes.

"Is she going to be okay?" I asked frantically.

"Yes, she's going to be okay. She wasn't up for long, you found her just in time. Any more time and she could've been done for." He said

"W-Well, what are her injuries, if any?" I asked

"She has some decent bruising and abrasions around her neck, and she's damaged her esophagus somewhat. It'll be a simple recovery; no medicine will be needed other than pain relief that you can buy at any drug store, it'll have to heal on its own. We'd like to keep her here for a night or two just to make sure nothing else is wrong with her. She won't be able to talk for at least a day or two, or at least we advised her to not speak just so her injuries don't worsen for the time being, and she'll need to eat softer foods for about a week or so until her neck is healed. However, she's okay now, and she's ready in room 276B just down the hall whenever you'd like to see her."

That was.. a lot to take in. I realized I'd have to explain what happened to her mom at some point.

"Thank you so much sir, from the bottom of my heart." I shook his hand, he nodded his head, and went off to the next person he was needed for. Those doctors are real life heroes.

I went to room 276B. I knocked on the door and let myself in.

There she was. She was in her hospital bed, in a gown, with some bandages around her neck.

She pointed to a little note on the bulletin board next to her. There were two notes actually. The one I wrote her the night before, and one from the nurse.

 _We gave the patient and white board to communicate until she's capable of speech again._

I pulled up a chair next to her bed. I sat down and looked at her. She regained color in her face, and the beautiful blue of her eyes were filled in again. I laid my head down in my arms for a minute on the side of the bed. I stood back up, and put arms around her, resting myself on her lightly.

"I'm so happy you're okay… I don't know what I'd do without you… " I say to her.

She puts her arms around me, and I hear her sniffle. She taps my shoulder blade and points to her white board. I get up and get it for her, and hand her the marker as well.

She writes quickly across, and flips it over to me.

 _I'm so sorry, Nick._

"Don't be sorry. All that matters is you're here with me, you're okay, and you're safe." I respond.

She writes again

 _I'm sorry you got caught up in this. I just wanted it to be quick._

"What're you talking about? Why did you do all of this? What if I showed up five minutes later?!"

She starts writing something, but erases it and writes something else.

She smiles a little.

 _This is too much to write, Nick._

I gave a light laugh. It felt nice to laugh, even if it was for a second. "Don't worry about it… but as soon as you're able to talk again, you have a lot of explaining to do. You're gonna talk to me about what's bothering you, and… what drove you to do this…" I say slowly.

 _Okay…_

"Promise me you will."

 _I promise._ She holds out her hand, with her pinky out. I interlace mine with hers.

"Do you care if I stay here with you?"

 _What about the literature club? And school?_

"I'm not going. I already told the girls in the group chat that you and I wouldn't be there today. But I didn't tell them why. Speaking of which, I grabbed your phone on the way out for you, so here." I handed her the phone.

 _Thank you, Nick, but I don't want you to miss school over me._

"Well, that's not for you to decide. I'm staying."

She gives me a disappointed look, but doesn't fight me over it. She points to the TV.

"You want me to turn it on?"

She nods her head 'yes'.

I turn it on, and hand her the remote. She starts writing again.

 _Can I ask you something?_

"Yeah, what's up?"

 _I know I said that I didn't want you missing school,_

She erases and keeps writing, she ran out of room

 _But… please don't leave._

My heart skipped a beat. She wanted me to stay here with her. I was internally really happy.

"Of course. I'll stay until it's time for you to leave. I will have to leave at some point to go get my car though."

 _Okay. Thank you._

"The doctor said you could be out of here in a day or two, so it shouldn't be that long at all. If we're lucky, you could be out of here tomorrow." I smile at her. She smiles back and nods.

After a couple minutes of watching the TV in the corner of the room, I turned to her. "I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm seriously tired… I'm gonna rest my eyes, okay?" She nods 'okay' to me.

I sat back down in the chair I had next to her bed, and folded my arms on the bed next to her and rested my head on them. I had way too much stress this morning, and since everything that had happened, I could use a little few minute nap. Natalie ran her hand through my hair, which felt really nice, just knowing she was here, right next to me. And she was okay. I only just realized what she was doing, running her hand through my hair. Did it make her feel better? She did say she wanted me to stay here. I didn't think anything else of it. I closed my eyes, and got some shut eye.

When I woke up, I woke up to Natalie laying on her side, her neck still supported, facing me. She had her hand on my left arm. She was asleep as well. I rose up slowly, and gently laid her hand down on the covers. I checked the time, I had slept for an hour, but it hadn't felt like it. God, my back is killing me. I thought. I guess the way I was sitting wasn't the best for my posture, but that didn't matter.

One of the nurses came to the door, I waved her in. She gave me a cup of what I hoped was applesauce.

"Yes, it's applesauce. We get that a lot. Whenever she wakes up, see if she'll eat some." She says

"O-Oh, alright. Thank you."

I just sat there for a while, looking at Natalie. I can't believe this beautiful girl laying in front of me, was almost taken from me. I laid my head back down beside her, but I wasn't about to go to sleep. I put her hand back where it was.

A few more minutes pass, and she wakes up, meeting my gaze, and she starts to move her hand away from my arm.

"It's alright, you can leave it there if that's what you want." I assure her. She puts it back and squeezes it a little. "The nurse came in and gave me a cup of applesauce. Do you want to try and eat a little?"

She grabs the whiteboard, sits up, and starts writing.

 _I'm actually not that hungry. But I'll try to eat just to see where my boundaries are._

She just barely fit that on the little whiteboard. She grabs the cup and spoon, and eats a little. She winces slightly on the first swallow, but is able to get most of the cup down.

"Hey, good job! That's a good sign." I smile at her and put my hand on her shoulder. She smiles back.

She starts writing.

 _It actually didn't really hurt. Just the first one._

She erases it, and writes something else.

 _I probably couldn't eat very solid food, but I'm actually feeling okay to eat._

"I'm glad, Nat." I say to her.

I was silent for a bit, before she wrote something else.

 _Can you find me a paper and pen?_

"What for?"

 _What I need to write next is too long._

"Oh, yeah, sure." I said.

I found some printer paper next to the gloves, and I just took a pencil that was on the bottom of the bulletin board. Natalie mouthed, 'one sec' to me. I nodded, and she started writing. After a while, she finished and showed me the paper.

 _Could you… spend the night here with me if they let you? Because if they allow you, you may want to head home and shower up and change into some more comfortable clothes or something. Not that you smell or anything, you actually smell nice, hehe. But since you're going through so much for me, I'd like you to at least be comfortable._

She… wants me to spend the night here with her? I couldn't believe what I was reading.

"I'd love to Natalie, that's a great idea, because then I can get my car so I can take you straight home from the hospital and we won't have to walk. Well… you won't have to walk." I smile at her again.

 _I'm sorry…_

"Don't be. It's okay. I'm not worried about the walk. I'm more worried about you. Are you gonna be okay while I'm gone? It's at least an hour walk, and on top of that a shower, and then a drive back."

She gives me a worried look, but shakes her head and starts writing on her whiteboard again.

 _I'll be okay. Just don't take too long, okay?_

"Okay."

 _I'll talk to the nurse about you spending the night._

She flips the board around, writes, and flips it back around.

 _Well, write to the nurse, hehe._

"Sounds like a plan. I'll head on home. I'll be back as soon as possible."

I walk over to the door, turn around, and give her a wave out. She waves back, and smiles. I really feel bad about her not being able to speak. It hasn't been that long, but I miss hearing her voice.

I started jogging home. I figured it'd be a good way to at least get a little workout in.

I actually got home in about forty-five minutes. I jogged most of the way, with little breaks in between to catch my breath. I went inside, and went through my clothes. What looked acceptable, but could be slept in comfortably? I picked out my favorite black joggers, and a dark gray tee. A tee? I don't want to worry Nat about that. I thought. I guess now would be an appropriate time to explain that one as well.

Remember when I said I had a little bit of self-harm issues when my parents first passed? Well, my left arm was the main target. I didn't like the pain, but it just distracted me from the elephant in the room at the time, or lack thereof. It left a few noticeable scars, all the way up to my bicep above my elbow. I can't explain why, but they can be kind of sensitive. Like, if I run my finger over it, it doesn't really hurt, it just tickles more than it should. But it can hurt if too much pressure is applied. They're all horizontal in relation to my arm, getting more and more noticeable the further up my arm you go.

The reason I flinch at a lot of stuff is because my friends, or rather the people that were my friends, kinda used to abuse me about it. I'm not going to go into much detail, but basically they thought it was funny to see me flinch whenever they raised a hand at me and acted like they were going to hit me, or my arm. Sometimes they actually would do it just for the hell of it. Some friends, right? I opened up to them about my arm, and they only made fun of me for it. Instead of getting support for my issue, I got bullied for it. So, I don't like to wear short sleeves, because I don't want anyone else finding out about it. Either someone will hurt me again, or I will worry somebody, and I don't want either of those things.

Another reason is because of my parents. Believe me, I love them to death, but I was sort of a punching bag in my family. Whether one of them needed to let off some steam, or they were drinking or anything of the sort. They loved me, but everyone has their problems and demons I suppose. I just kind of grew accustomed to it I guess… I'm not going to explain any more of it.

Screw it, it was still cooler outside. I'll wear the tee, and wear a comfy zip-up on top. I'll even bring a pull-over for Natalie. She may need something to keep her warm, considering she's _always_ cold.

I get my clothes together, and take a brisk shower. I get dressed, brush my teeth in case my breath smelled bad, do my hair, and grab up all my stuff. I pack away a water bottle, a brush, the extra sweatshirt, my wallet, and a phone charger for Natalie in a drawstring bag. I grab my keys and head out the door.

I hopped in my car, and begin the drive back over to the hospital. It was four-thirty. The girls were probably finishing up their poem sharing right now. I still needed to do that. I was going to do it during study hall so Natalie could help me out, but that plan sure as hell changed. This whole thing was going to be hard to explain to all of them.

I got back to the hospital faster than I expected, which was a really good thing actually. The sooner I got to see Natalie, the better. I headed inside, and went to the corridor that Natalie's room was in. 276B. I made it back, Nat. I knocked on the door, and let myself in. She was in her obvious spot, on the bed, but she was on her side, facing away from the door.

"Natalie? I'm back."

She sat up and looked over at me, wiping away tears.

"Woah woah, is everything alright?" I set my stuff down and walked over to her.

She looked at me and hugged me around my abdomen, burying her face into my jacket.

"Hey," I said gently, "What's wrong?" I hugged her back, rubbing her back lightly.

I let go of her and wiped her eye for her, handing her the little whiteboard.

 _I just tried to sleep, but there was nothing but nightmares._

"Aw, I'm sorry. Do you want to talk about it?"

She gave me a sarcastic look, then pointed to her bandages.

"Oh… yeah. Sorry about that…"

She began to write again.

 _Nick, I don't want to be alone again. That's when it's the worst._

I felt terrible. I knew I shouldn't have left. She was starting to open up about this to me finally, so I didn't try to question what she told me, I just comforted her.

"I'm sorry, Nat. Do you need me to get a nurse to supervise you or anything?"

She wrote faster than normal this time, and quickly flips the board around, erasing what she wrote after she shows me.

 _No…_

 _I need you Nick…_

 _I feel better when you're around_

 _I don't want you to leave_

I-I couldn't believe what she was telling me. She… needed me? I mean, obviously (and technically) she did need me. Despite the situation, I was overjoyed. I didn't question her. I smiled at her after the last board, and she looked away, seemingly blushing. I don't want to sound like a jerk, but technically I did save her. I figured I'd open up to her a little too.

"Well… I need you too Nat. Why do you think I was freaking out so bad today? I like you a lot Nat. I couldn't be happy without you around, I don't know what I would do. But, don't worry. I won't leave anymore. I'm sorry I did, I knew I shouldn't have." I told her.

She sat there, taking in what I told her, then started to write again.

 _Don't be sorry! I encouraged you to go, it was my fault._

"It wasn't anybody's fault. It was something that needed to happen. But now it's done and over with, and we don't have to worry about it anymore, right?"

She nods her head yes.

I figured this would be a good time to get my stuff out. I pulled out my pull-over.

"Hey, I forgot to mention. I wore this jacket so I'd be more comfortable, so I brought you one of my hoodies too, so you had something to keep you warm. Other than the covers, that is."

She holds out her hands, and I toss it to her. She happily accepts it, but gets a kind of embarrassed expression. She pulls over the whiteboard and begins writing once again.

She shows it to me

 _There's one problem…_

"What's that?" I ask

 _I can't use the pull-over… Because of my neck…_

"Oh, well here, I'll give you my zip-up and I'll take the pull-over." I start to take off my jacket, and hand her it while I take the hoodie from her and slip it on.

She immediately starts writing something on the board, a little fast, and messier than her normal neat, type-writer-like norm.

 _What was on your arm?_


	4. Chapter 4

**I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

"Oh, well here, I'll give you my zip-up and I'll take the pull-over." I start to take off my jacket, and hand her it while I take the hoodie from her and slip it on.

She immediately starts writing something on the board, a little fast.

 _What was on your arm?_

What?... Oh my god. My tee I had on underneath. I forgot I wasn't wearing a long sleeve. She must've seen my scars. Dammit, how could I be so stupid?! I didn't want to worry her about this right now.

"My arm? Nothing, why?"

 _Nick…_

"What?"

 _Take off the pull-over._

I looked at her one more time, giving her a pleading look, and she nods at me. _'Well? Take it off!'_ I can imagine her yelling at me in her voice.

She makes a 'come here' gesture with her hands, and nods again, as if saying 'get on with it'.

I walked over to her and reluctantly but compliantly took it off. She immediately went for my left arm. She took my arm and turned it over… She caught me.

She looked it my arm, her mouth was ajar from shock, and she looked at me. I felt really guilty, and looked away. She pulled me a little closer, inspecting my arm. She ran her fingers over my wrist, then my forearm, and that when she noticed the highest up ones. She pulled my sleeve up and looked at the most damaged cuts. She kept running her hands over them, like she was trying to heal something that couldn't be healed. She kept giving me innocent looks.

Then she did something kind of odd, she gave my arm a hug. She looked at me one last time, then grabbed her white board.

 _Nick… Why did you hurt yourself? How long have those been there?_

She had tears in her eyes.

I didn't want to lie to her, but I couldn't tell her the story. I was straight up with her.

"I've had them since… Mom and Dad passed. I'll tell you the whole story when we're out of here, okay? I promise. Don't worry about it right now."

 _Okay, but I'm holding you to that…_

I reached down for the pull over, but she waved her hands at me to stop me.

 _Don't hide them._

I gave her a confused look, but again I complied. I set it aside.

She patted the side of her bed and scooted over.

"You want me to sit on the bed with you?"

She nods 'yes'

The bed was actually pretty large, considering it was a hospital bed. It was probably about the same size as your average double-size bed, so her and I would easily fit on it together. I figured that these beds were more likely for the… larger patients, but it must've been one of the only ones they had at the time. I got on, and she sat off to the left. I checked the time. It was seven-o-clock.

She starts writing again

 _Is it okay with you if I go to bed? I'm kind of tired, it's been a long day._

She writes "long day" into the corner to save space.

"Yeah, that's okay. Believe me, I know. Did the nurses say whether it would be okay for me to stay or not?".

She nodded yes. She curls up in a way where she has the jacket draped over her, and her legs are wrapped around mine a little. It was unexpected, but I let her. She puts her hand or my arm, but hesitates.

"It's okay, go ahead." I reassure her.

She takes it into a hug, and starts to drift off to sleep. I put my other hand up behind my head, and try to get some sleep myself.

I woke up to a bright light coming through the hospital room window. Hospital? Oh my god, it was real. What happened yesterday actually happened. I checked the time: 7:02. We slept almost twelve hours?! I could see Natalie doing that, mainly because its Natalie, but also because she's healing. But me? I guess I was pretty stressed out yesterday. I decided I'd check on her, until I realized how close she was to me.

She was facing me, but I was on my back. Her head was practically touching mine, and I could feel her breath on my neck. Her legs were wrapped around mine, and she had a death hug on my left arm. I figured she hadn't ate in a while, so I ought to at least wake her up and see how she's doing.

"Hey…" I nudged her lightly.

"…hmm?..."

Wait… What? Did she actually make noise?

"Natalie?" I nudged her again.

"…huh? What is it?" she said faintly, as she opened her glossy blue eyes.

"Nat, your voice is back!" It was quiet, but I was so happy to hear it again.

"It is?... It is!" She exclaims, but in a little cough. She wrapped her arms around my neck, and I could feel circulation reflowing to my arm.

She hit the 'call nurse' button. If I knew her any better, she was either gonna ask for food, ask to leave, or both. She showed up about a minute later.

"Is everything alright?" She asked.

Natalie nodded her head. "My voice is back! Can I leave yet? Also, can I get something else to eat? I'm starving."

It was both. I know her too well.

"Well that's good! I'll get you another cup of applesauce, but I'm not allowed to decide when patients leave, I'll go fetch your doctor and get him to look you over." She headed back out the door.

"I'm so happy I got my voice back!-" She said loudly. She completed her statement, but started coughing afterword.

"Don't push yourself too hard. Keep it easy. We don't want you doing any more damage to yourself." I told her.

"O-Okay…" She gave me a pouty look, but she knew I was right.

The doctor knocked, and let himself in. I got up from the bed so he could get a closer look at her.

"Hey there, how are you feeling?" He asked

"Better! It's still sore, and I definitely won't be able to eat solids yet, but I got my voice back!" she said

"That's what the nurse had told me, I'm glad to hear that. Why don't we change your bandages?" He looked back at me, and back to her. "Is it okay for him to see?"

She nodded her head, and he proceeded to remove her bandages. They were reddened underneath with old blood. That must've been uncomfortable for her, I'm surprised she hadn't said anything before. Her neck wasn't bleeding anymore, but was bruised for sure. It was a purplish blue underneath her jawline, obviously where she was… hanging… yesterday morning. I'm so happy it wasn't any worse. He used a surgical cloth with some stuff on it that I could only assume was disinfectant, and rubbed it over her wounds. She grimaced at it, but took a deep breath and dealt with it. I was surprised she was handling it so well. He talked to her while he was working on her.

"You know, you have a really good boyfriend, he's a keeper." He said

That caught us both off guard. She looked over at me, blushing, and looked back over to him.

"O-Oh, he's not my boyfriend…" She trailed off.

He stopped and looked back at me. I smiled and rubbed the back of my neck, looking down, embarrassed.

"Well I wouldn't say that considering the way you two were last night." He chuckled.

He saw us? We were sleeping for a while, and we went to bed quite early. He must've come to check on her, but didn't want to wake us.

He could tell we were both pretty embarrassed.

"Haha, I'm just playing with you guys. But really, if it wasn't for him, you may not be alive right now young lady." He said.

I could tell that comment kind of made her uncomfortable. She shifted a little, and looked at me. I forgot about how recently she acquired these injuries, and what exactly had happened. She obviously still wasn't okay with everything. I'll have to talk to her when we get home.

"I-I know. I'm really lucky to have him…" She said. I smiled at her.

He finished up, and re-wrapped her bandages. He turned to me.

"She's all good to go. You can take her out whenever she's ready." She gasped, let out a little cough, and stood up from her bed, obviously happy to hear that. "Make sure she leaves in a wheelchair. She obviously doesn't need one, but it's just policy here that everyone leaves that way." He told me.

"Thank you. Is there anything else I should know?" I asked

"Make sure to change her bandages one more time tomorrow, after that she won't need them. She'll know when she's ready for solid food, but for now, just softer things. Smoothies, applesauce, ice cream, that kind of stuff. Make sure to stop by the front desk, I let them know you'd be on the way out, and told them to give you something." He said.

"Thank you so much." I shook his hand.

"You're welcome, son. Keep a close eye on her, okay? I enjoyed her company, but I don't want to see her back here again." He pointed at her, but gave her a playful smile before waving us out.

"What a nice guy. I didn't get his name…" I said

"Dr. Frazier" Natalie chimed in.

"Dr. Frazier… I'll remember that. Well, are you ready to go?" I said to her.

"Yep, I just have to get changed."

"Alright, I'll go find you a wheel chair."

She went into the bathroom, and I grabbed a wheel chair off of one of the nurses. I came back to the room, and she was dressed and ready to go. I noticed she had my jacket on. She sat down, and I wheeled her through the hall. I think she was happy to be out of that room. We made it to the front desk.

"I'm here to check out Natalie Patterson?" I said.

"Ah, yes. Dr. Frazier said you'd be coming. What will be your method of pay?" The desk woman asked.

Method of pay?... That's right. Her mother wasn't here, nor did she know. Without her here, Natalie had no way of paying.

I got my wallet out and handed her my card. Natalie looked up at me and realized what I was doing. She stood up.

"Nick, no! You can't!" She exclaimed.

"Stop." I said firmly. I wasn't mad at her, but I wasn't going to let her talk me out of it. "I got it, it's okay. Your mom isn't here, there's no other way." I said.

"B-But…" She trailed off. She sat back down, defeated. She was clearly bothered.

The desk woman handed me back my card. She asked me if she could speak to me separately. I followed her a little bit away from Natalie, but not before assuring her that I'd be right over where the desk woman pointed.

She handed me a pamphlet, giving various therapist offices within the area.

"Dr. Frazier wanted you to have this. She will be okay with her injuries, but she still attempted suicide. There could be something wrong with her mentally, and he would like you to go over this with her sometime soon and pick an office out."

"O-Oh, okay. Thank you."

She made her way back to the desk. I put the pamphlet in my bag, and walked back over to Natalie.

"What'd she give you?" she asked.

"I'll show you later, okay? Let's get you home first."

"Okay…" She didn't fight me on it, although I totally expected her to.

I wheeled her out to where my car was, and she got in the passenger side. I gave her the key so she could start the car and get the heat going. There were wheel chair returns at this place, similar to how grocery stores have shopping cart returns, except it was inside. I returned the chair, and made my way back to the car. I got in and looked over at Natalie. She had the seat reclined back to where she was laying down, but she was facing away from me.

"Is everything alright?" I asked

She was quiet, but eventually responded.

"…I didn't want you to have to pay for that. I'm so sorry, Nick. It had to be expensive…"

"It was the least I could do. Don't worry about it, I wanted to pay for it." I was just trying to make her feel better. But, she was right. It was expensive. I wasn't lying though. I really didn't mind paying for it.

"What do you mean, 'It was the least I could do'?!" She snapped, mocking my voice. "Not to be rude, but I'm still breathing because of you. You've done so much for me and now you're doing more. I don't deserve all of this treatment."

I was quiet at first. I didn't really know how to respond. She had never spoken to me this way before. It was like seeing a completely different person…

"Why do you keep thinking like this?" I said. "Don't you remember what I told yesterday in the hospital? You're worth all of my time. There's nothing I wouldn't do for you. You deserve all of it and more. Even if you feel you don't deserve it, or if you think you're being a nuisance to me, I'm doing it because I WANT to, not because I HAVE to."

She's quiet, taking in what I said, but finally responds.

"… I-I'm sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you…"

"It's okay Natalie, I didn't take it that way. You've been through a lot the last twenty-four hours. Let's just get home, okay? We can talk about anything you want when we get back."

She rolls back over, and looks at me. She seems like she wanted to cry but was holding it in. I put my hand on her leg.

"Everything's okay" I reassured her.

She nodded, and I put the car in reverse. I backed out of the spot we were in, and started the drive home.

I drove for a little bit, and looked back over at her. She was sleeping. It amazes me how much this girl can eat and sleep. Speaking of which, that nurse never did come back with anything for her to eat. She hasn't eaten since yesterday, and it was just a cup of applesauce. I hope she has something at home.

We pulled into her driveway, I tried to wake her up, but she wouldn't budge. I decided I might as well carry her in.

I opened up the passenger door and picked her up and carried her inside. I set her down on the couch, and shut the door behind me. When I turned back around, I caught her looking at me.

"Hey! You weren't even asleep!" I said to her.

"hehe… I didn't want to walk inside…" She admitted quietly.

I shook my head, but smiled. I sat down beside her, and looked around. Just yesterday, I found her in this house upstairs, and she was hanging from a beam upstairs by her neck. It didn't even feel like a day ago, it felt like so long ago. I was getting mixed feeling to be back in this house. I was happy to be in it again, and especially with her in it. Alive…

She nudged me with her leg. "You're spacing out." She reminded me.

"Oh, sorry." I remembered about her eating. "Did you want anything to eat?" She nodded. I got up and went to her kitchen to see what they had. She had some pudding cups in the fridge.

"Is pudding okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine."

I handed her the pudding, along with a spoon. She got it down surprisingly well.

After she finished it, she nudged me again.

"I have kind of an… odd question for you…"

"What is it?" I asked

"Well… I don't…" She looked at me again "I don't want to be here right now… and I don't think I'll be able to be by myself… is it okay if… I-I slept over tonight?"

I was actually really glad she asked, because I was going to ask her myself if I could sleep over her house, because I didn't want her to be alone anymore. But her coming to my house would be even better.

"Of course you can! I'd love to have you over." I made sure she knew she was welcome, she seemed nervous to ask. "You're going to have to get some stuff together though if you're spending the night, though."

"R-Really? Thank you!" She hugs me. "But… could you come to my room with me? I don't want to go in there alone."

"Yeah, I'll go with you." I assured her.

She got up, and made her way to the stairs. I followed.

We were at the door to her room. She walked right in and started to get her things together. I was surprised at how calm she was at doing this, because I couldn't say the same for myself. When I walked in, I was just frozen in place. I looked around the room and felt sick to my stomach. It was haunting being in there, and seeing the rope still on the floor, cut. The chair from her desk kicked over on it's side. The last time I was in here, she was hanging from the ceiling. I thought I was about to lose her. I was convinced it would be the last time I'd see her alive. I was a little choked up.

Natalie had everything she needed, and looked at me. She could tell I was troubled to be in there. She grabbed my hand and walked me out of the room, shutting the door behind her after shutting the light off. She walked into the bathroom, grabbed what toiletries she needed, and came back out, leading me down the stairs.

"I'm sorry you had to see that…" She said.

I was in a trance. I snapped out of it.

"O-Oh, it's okay. Are you ready to go?"

"Mhmm" she quickly replies.

We walk back over to my car, and I drove it back over into my driveway. It was only a house over, but I thought it would be rude to leave it in Natalie's driveway. I felt more comfortable having it in my garage anyways.

"You could've just left your car at my house." She said.

Welp, too late for that.

"It's alright, I like having it over here anyways." I say.

We make our way inside, and Natalie is quick to make herself at home, immediately sprawling out on my couch. I checked the time. Three-thirty. Was it really that late in the day? I felt like just a few minutes ago I woke up on the hospital bed next to Natalie.

She gets up. "Can I use your shower? This may sound gross, but I haven't had a real shower since the day before yesterday… hehe." She does a little pose where she presses her two index fingers together, clearly embarrassed to say that.

"Yeah, sure. You know where it is. Just be careful not to get your bandages wet. You may not want to wash your hair, at least this once." I respond.

She heads upstairs, and I hear her close the bathroom door. I figured I would make her up something to eat. Or… consume? I checked out what I had around the house. I had some stuff, but mostly stuff she couldn't eat. But, I did find something I think I could make work. I had everything to make a strawberry-banana smoothie.

I took out the blender, and put five ice cubes in, then added five strawberries. I got a banana, cut it into small pieces, and added it. On top of all of that, I put half a cup of strawberry-banana flavored yoghurt on top. I set it to the 'smoothie' setting, and let it go for about a minute. This wasn't the first time I made this actually. It was my favorite smoothie, and I made it regularly, which is why I had the stuff to make it. I don't think Natalie has ever had one before, or at least one of mine.

After it was done, I set it in the fridge, that way it would stay cold until she was done in the shower. My stomach rumbled. I hadn't eaten anything since I found her. I must've been so focused on her, that now that I was finally alone it was hitting me. I grabbed another batch of stuff to make the smoothie and made myself one as well.

I took a seat on the couch, kicked my feet up, and turned on the TV. The couch reclined in certain spots, but it was also one of those couches that is shaped like an 'L', and I was sitting on the spot that went out like a little bed. I don't normally watch sports, but I just switched it on to college baseball. I used to play when I was younger, so it at least entertained me.

Natalie came backdown stairs. She had on some shorts that came up a little distractingly high, and a short sleeve pink shirt. She fixed up her hair a little, with her signature bow on top. She came over and sat next to me, eyeing my drink.

"Woah, whatchya got there? That looks so good!" She said

"You wanna try?" I ask, holding the glass of my smoothie out.

"A-are you sure?"

"Yeah, go ahead. I don't mind."

She takes a sip from the straw I had in it, and her face lights up.

"What is this?" She asks.

"A strawberry-banana smoothie. I made it myself." I smile at her.

"It's so good Nick! Why have I never had this before? I wish there was more…"

"Well lucky for you," I get up from my seat and open the fridge, pulling out the other glass of it I made. "I made extra". I put a little straw in it, like my glass had.

She gasps, and happily takes it from me. She takes a sip of it.

"This may be my new favorite thing. Ever." She says.

I laugh a little. "It's just a smoothie, Nat."

"But it's a smoothie you made, and that makes it special!" She smiles at me and takes another sip. I was happy to see her happy for once. It's almost like she's back to her normal self.

 _But she isn't. That isn't it._

I'm going to get it out of her later.

"Well, I'm glad you like it." I smile back

"It feels nice when I drink it, too. The coldness of it soothes my throat, and it's easy for me to drink. It's like you're healing me in more ways than one! You're a genius Nick."

"Thanks! That's why I made it. But really, you're giving me too much credit. I make these all the time, haha." I chuckle. "So what do you want to do while you're here?" I ask.

"I'm not sure." She stops and puts a hand on her chin, thinking. "Do you still have that thing we used to play games on? The Xbox? We could play one of the games on there. Or a board game. Or we could watch a movie." She lists off.

That's when I realized it was Friday night. We missed Thursday and Friday because of being in the hospital.

"We can do any and all of those if you'd like, we don't have a time limit. But we are going to have to do our homework at some point." I said

"That's right… Let's play a board game first though. What games do you have?"

I got up and went to the closet we kept the games in. I yelled back to her "Let's see, we have Monopoly, Scrabble, Boggle, Jenga, Uno, and some other things."

"Oh, I like Jenga!"

I pulled it down from the shelf and set it up on the coffee table in front of the couch. We set it up, and played a couple of games, all of which I won. She may have liked the game, but between you and me, she wasn't very good at it. She always tried to go for risky moves that would mess me up in the long run, but would fail to remove the piece properly, and it always ended in her defeat. I could tell she wasn't going to let up until she beat me, so I threw a game to let her win.

"HA! You lose!" I didn't think she was this competitive.

"Not like I won the last four games or anything…" I look away, teasing her. She kicks my leg.

"Don't be mean! I beat you fair and square." She said.

"Uhuh, sure you did." She and I laugh.

She was quiet, but perks up again. "Do you wanna go play the Xbox now?" she asks.

"Sure, go ahead up to my room, I'll meet you up there."

"Okay!" She runs up the stairs, as if she were racing me. I put the game away, and stow it away back into the closet. I make my way upstairs. This felt like how we hung out when we were younger…

I walk into my room, and she was on my bed , rolling around on it for some reason.

"Your room is so clean! And you bed is soooo plushy." She says.

"Uh, thanks I guess. What game did you wanna play?" I ask.

"Can we actually watch a movie? I don't feel like playing anything else. Plus, it's getting late and dark out, and that's the perfect time to watch movies!"

"Yeah, we can."

I start getting Netflix ready. I figured now would be a good time to talk to her about what's been going on.

"But first…"

She gives me a questioning look. I sit down on the bed next to where she was laying.

"…you're going to tell me what's wrong. And what caused you to do what you did yesterday." I finally say, poking her leg as I say it.

"O-Oh…" She won't meet my gaze. This is probably going to take some convincing, and a lot of effort. But she needed to tell me.

"Come on, Nat. No more hiding things. You need to tell me."

She was quiet for a little bit, but she finally says something.

She sighs. "This was so much easier before you joined the club…"

"What do you mean?" I ask.

She starts to get teary eyed. This is going to be hard for her.

"It's alright, take your time." I assure her.

"I just wanted everyone to be happy…"

I stay quiet, listening to her.

She gets a more serious look, and takes a deep breath. "I-I'm just going to try and get it all out…"

I sit back, putting my weight on my arms, watching her. "Go ahead." I said.

"The literature club wasn't always how it seems. Naomi and Ada fight pretty often because they have two completely different views about literature, and they refuse to listen to the other person. It stresses me and Marissa out and just brings the atmosphere down. I thought I would, you know, bring a new member in to bring everyone else's spirits up." She looks at me, and I nod. "And I figured, you know, 'hey, I haven't hung out with Nick in a while, I'll see if he wants to join' and luckily, you did. Although I kind of used you, and didn't give you a choice, which made me feel terrible. And the first day went by okay! But I wasn't sure how you felt. I was finally hanging out with you, and seeing you every day, just like how we used to. But the rainclouds wouldn't go away! Then the second day came, and I got to go to the club with you again, but you kept worrying about me, and I didn't want you to forget about the club, I wanted you, and everyone else to be happy! And when I saw you finally talking to Ada and Naomi, making them happy, and everyone was getting along, I wasn't happy. My heart was hurting, and I couldn't tell why!" She's crying now, speaking between sobs. "I was trying my best, and everybody was happy, but I wasn't. I couldn't take it anymore. I told Marissa I didn't feel good, and I ran home. The second I got home, I typed in on my computer: 'how to tie a noose, for idiots'. I couldn't take it, I wanted the rain clouds to go away, and there was only one way I knew they would…" She pauses, then sits up. "But then, you knocked on the door. I contemplated ignoring it, but my heart told me to open the door. You were worried about me, and were checking up on me again. I was so glad that we were talking again like we used to, I loved having your company, but hated that I was taking time out of your day, wasting your time. I thought to myself, 'Why does he always worry about me? I wish he wouldn't waste his time on something so hopeless.' I was having such a nice time with you, but when I woke up, I saw your note, and realized what I had done. I made you do too much. I wasted your time, and couldn't take it anymore… and-and… and then-"

I immediately grabbed her, and pulled her into a hug. She was crying into my shirt, I ran my hand up and down on her back, comforting her. I almost wished I hadn't asked, because then she wouldn't be crying, but I had to. She needed to tell me. This was good for both her and I. I couldn't believe these words were coming out of Natalie's mouth.

"I-I've had this my whole life, Nick!" Her muffled voice yelled from my shirt. She started coughing again.

"I-It's okay, Natalie, clam down. Don't hurt yourself." I said.

We just sat there, hugging each other for what felt like forever, until she finally said one last thing,

"Nick… I've… I've always loved you…"

I looked down at her, she was looking up at me, but quickly buried her face back into my shirt when she saw me look down at her.

I… I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I had no words. Now was the time. I spoke in the moment, with no thought behind my words.

"I-I love you too! I always have!" I exclaimed.

She was hugging me around my abdomen, but she looked up at me, locked eyes with me, and threw her arms around my shoulders, causing me to fall back, and her to be on top of me.

After a moment, she spoke up again.

"I don't understand… this is supposed to be one of the happiest moments of my life… why don't the rainclouds go away?..."

She may not, but I think I was starting to understand.

"It's okay, it's just going to take some time, that's all. We'll fix it."

We were both quiet. Living in the moment. I spoke up again.

"Nat, you said you've had this your whole life?..."

She sniffles, and nods her head.

"Would you say you feel depressed?"

"I guess that's a good way to put it… but it's heavily reduced when I'm with you." She says

I think for a second, then respond.

"Maybe you have depression?..."

She's quiet, but then responds, hugging me tighter.

"I-It's possible…"

"Well, I was going to bring it up later, but… Dr. Frazier had the desk woman at the hospital give me a pamphlet with a whole bunch of therapist offices to look at. Do you want to go see one tomorrow? We have school off."

"W-We can look at a few." She responds.

"Good. I'm proud of you." I say with a smile.

I laid there holding her for a little longer, even though we had that whole conversation in a hug, and then let go of her. I went through everything in my head that she said, and figured I'd tell her how I feel now.

"Nat, I've always liked you. I just never knew you felt the same." She looked at me, and rubbed one of her eyes. I continued. "Why do you think I reacted the way I did when I found you? I've loved you ever since I was a kid. As we grew up, I thought you didn't like me, or that I was just getting in the way. I was distant because I thought you didn't feel the same… I'm sorry if it seemed like I was ignoring you or anything, but… I would do anything, and everything for you. I couldn't imagine life without you. I've… I've already lost Mom and Dad… what would I do without you?" I felt a tear roll down the side of my cheek, but I kept my cool. "Now that you've told me all of this, I can't help but feel like it's partly my fault… Natalie… promise me you'll never hurt yourself, or pull another stunt like that again."

She hugged me again, and said quietly in my ear:

"I promise."

She let go of me, and I let go of her. We both looked at each other, blushing.

After both of us just poured all of our emotions out, we both just sat there, staring into each other's eyes. It was such a tense feeling in the air, like we both didn't want it to end, and at the same time wanted it to stop immediately. She was the first to break the silence.

"So… uh… what movie you want to watch?" She said with a smile, wiping her eyes, giggling.

 _(Just in case some of you were wondering, I intend to keep this story mostly wholesome. Sure, there will still be some high and low moments, however I hope to keep it not too stressful. I'm a lame hopeless romantic, but that's the way I hope to take this. As always, thank you for reading, I'm very open to any criticism, and see you in the next chapter!)_


	5. Chapter 5

_(By the end of this chapter, I'm going to have a heart-to-heart with you guys. Feel free to ignore it if you don't wish to read it.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

"So… uh… what movie you want to watch?" She said with a smile, wiping her eyes, laughing.

I smiled back. I hopped up, and grabbed the remote. We scrolled through the movies, and she stopped on a comedy movie.

"That one!" She said happily. I think my entire confession really lightened her mood. I mean, she lightened my mood as well. I just found out she had the same feelings for me that I did for her. I couldn't help but feel more attached to her. Did she feel the same?

I got up, and turned the light off, and sat down on the floor by the edge of my bed. Natalie laid back, and scooted over closer to the edge of the bed, to where she was almost touching my head. She had her arm hanging off the bed, around me, with her hand resting on my arm.

We were a few minutes into the movie, and I noticed Natalie wasn't chuckling at the jokes in the movie anymore. I turned around, and saw she was asleep. I didn't care for the movie, so I paused it, and got up. I went and found a blanket and pillow for myself, and laid it out on the ground, but my movement woke her up.

"Huh? Did I fall asleep during the movie?..."

"Yeah. It's okay though, I paused it so we could resume it later. It is getting late, and I thought I'd let you sleep. I'm sorry if I woke you."

"It's okay! But… what're you doing on floor?"

"I'm letting you have my bed, silly. And I'm not going to go sleep in another room. I like being in the same room. It makes me feel better, so I know you're right here, and safe." I smile at her.

She starts to get up. "Wait, at least let me sleep on the floor so you can have your bed!"

I stop her. "I know you like my bed, Natalie. I insist. I'm okay on the floor."

She lays back down, but gives me a guilty, worried look.

"Well… I-I don't mind… sharing… i-if you'd like…" She scoots over, and lifts the covers up.

"Are you sure?" I ask

She hides her face from her nose down under the covers, and nods her head.

"O-Okay, thanks."

I slide into the bed, giving her a little space in between us, facing away from her.

We were stuck in an awkward silence for a minute or two before I hear her voice again.

"Hey," she says. I turn over to face her.

"hm?" I say lightly

"Thank you…"

"For what?" I asked

"For… everything…" She has tears in her eyes.

I smiled, and held out my arms. She crawled into the hug, holding back crying. She was cute when she cried. She was cute all the time. But I didn't like to see her cry.

"You're welcome."

We were quiet for a little while, just holding each other. I decided to push the limits.

"I love you."

"…I-I love you too, Nick." She pulls her head away, looks at me, and smiles. She puts her head back, and closes her eyes. She wraps her legs round mine, and hugs a little tighter.

I close my eyes too, and we both drift to sleep in each other's arms.

.

I woke up in the middle of the night to some shifting around from Natalie. She normally moved around a little when she slept, I knew from past sleep overs we had when we were kids, although we've never shared a bed before, but this was different. She was in a cold sweat, and mumbling some things, but nothing was really understandable except for the few mentions of my name, which was… odd?

Well, this was a dilemma. Do I wake her up? I looked over at the clock on my nightstand: 2:55. She loves her sleep, but she certainly seems bothered. I get nightmares sometimes, and I know if the situation were reversed I'd want her to wake me up.

I decided I'd wake her up.

The way we were positioned was still mostly the same from before we went to bed, she was facing me. Her arms weren't around me, but rather crossed in an 'x' against her chest, held tightly. One of my arms was underneath her, and the other was up curled over my head. I poked her arm lightly.

"Hey, you alright?" I asked

She didn't give a response, and shivered a little. I gave her a heavier nudge.

"Wake up, Nat, you're having a nightmare."

"…h-huh? What?" She said groggily.

"Are you alright? You were having a nightmare and kind of freaking out in your sleep."

"N-No I wasn't, what makes you think that?" she asked.

"Well, you were in a cold sweat, shivering, and moving more than usual." I said.

She shifted a little, and was quiet for a moment, then responded.

"Maybe I was having one… a-a little one… but don't worry about it, I'm okay!" She craned her neck over me to look at the clock. "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for waking you up, It's so late!"

"It's okay, don't worry about it. As long as you're okay is all I'm worried about, plus, we don't have school tomorrow, so we aren't missing anything if we sleep in."

She was quiet, obviously bothered. It was silent for a moment, until I decided to break it.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really… do you think it would be good for me to talk about it?"

I thought for a minute, then responded.

"I think it would be, but if you're not comfortable with doing so then don't force yourself, you don't have to." I smiled at her and brushed her hair out of her eyes.

She blushed. "Y-You're too good to me… how about tomorrow morning? I'm super tired and all I can think about is sleep… that, and… how good your voice sounds when you're tired…" She mutters the last part to where it's just barely audible.

"What was that?" I said with a smile, I could feel the blood rushing to my cheeks.

"Nothinnn…" She covered her face with the covers again.

"Well, let's get back to sleep, alright?" I put my arm around her back and pulled her close in again. She giggles as she gets comfortable. "If you ever wake up in the middle of the night because of a nightmare or anything, don't be afraid to wake me up, alright?"

She was already out like a light _. I don't even know if she heard my last statement, but I'll let her sleep._ I thought.

I closed my eyes once again, and went back to sleep.

.

I awoke exactly the way we went to sleep. She was a great thing to wake up to. She looked so peaceful, with her beautiful blue eyes closed, her mouth slightly parted, her chest lightly rising up and down, her hair hanging slightly down in front of her face. I carefully slid out of bed so I wouldn't wake her, and covered her back up with the blankets. I figured since I was up before her I could make her some breakfast.

I decided I would make a four-course breakfast, since she's always so hungry in the morning. Her favorite is waffles. My mom used to always make them for us when we were kids. I put some frozen waffles in the toaster, put some maple syrup in the microwave to heat up. While those were being taken care of, I cracked some eggs, whisked them up, and set them aside to be used for later. I only really knew how to make them scrambled.

After the waffles and eggs were finished, I put some bread in the toaster, and started cooking some of the bacon I had left in the fridge. I hoped that the sound of it sizzling wouldn't wake her up.

After everything was made, I set everything up nicely at the table and went to wake her up, when to my surprise I saw her standing at the top of the stairs, with one of the smaller blankets around her shoulders.

"Did you make breakfast? The smell of bacon woke me up, hehe."

 _Can… can people even smell things in their sleep?_

"Yeah, I did," I beamed at her. "and I hope you're hungry, because I made a lot of it! And I made your faavvoorriittee…"

"Waffles?!"

"Yes, waffles." I laughed.

"Take me to them immediately." She demanded. Food was her top priority, second was sleep. Although, I know she was also trying to funny in her own way.

I led her over to the table.

"Holy crap, you really did make a lot. It looks really good! Thank you so much, you're so thoughtful." She said with a smile, the blanket still wrapped around her.

"Anything for you." I smiled at her. It wasn't really anything special, I know it didn't look that good and she was just being nice to me, but I still took the compliment. I pulled out her chair for her.

"Quite the gentleman you are!" She teased.

"Only the best for you, madam." I bowed to her in a knowingly cringy way. She giggled to herself and lightly punched my arm. Then she started to eat my sorry excuse for a breakfast.

I took a seat in the other chair and started to dig in as well.

"How did you sleep? Aside from the nightmare that is, which you said we would talk about this morning." I reminded her.

"Well… aside from that… It was one of the best sleeps I've ever had. Your bed was seriously the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in."

"Well, admittedly, it was a great sleep for me too. Are you going to tell me about your nightmare?" I asked.

"…you're gonna laugh at me…"

"I won't, I promise. I would never laugh at you over a nightmare, let alone anything else."

"Okay… well remember, you promised!"

"I know, I know. Go ahead." I smiled at her.

"Well… don't be mad… but basically it was like a flashback to when your parents passed. Except… you ended up hurting yourself. You were cutting yourself all over your arms and face, and wouldn't let us help you. And it got to the point to where it was just me and you on that bridge down the street… and…" she stops. "I was trying to convince you not to, but right before I was able to grab you and stop you… you…"

I got up from the table, walked over, and hugged her.

"Promise me you'll never do anything like that…" She said.

"I promise. I would never laugh at you about anything like that, Nat. You can talk to me about anything."

"eheh, t-thanks. I know I can always count on you…" she says.

 _This is starting to feel weird… what are we? Is that something I can ask Natalie without giving her the wrong idea? Are we dating, are we still just friends? I mean, we've been acting like we're dating recently. We both have feelings for each other. Or at least… I think she does? She didn't just develop these feelings because I was the one who helped, or, saved her… right?_

No. That wasn't the case. I shouldn't be thinking like that. We have feelings for each other that we've both made pretty obvious. As far as I'm concerned, we pretty much are dating, although that's something I'll let Natalie decide at a later date.

I released her, gathered up the rest of the finished dishes, and put them into the sink. I walked over to the couch, and patted the spot next to me. She stood in front me.

"I'm sorry I made you worry about me." I finally said.

"I-It's okay! It was just a nightmare. Plus, I should be the one apologizing, you made me this big breakfast even after I woke you up in the middle of the night. How hopeless can I be…"

I grabbed her hand, and pulled her down. "Stop it, I was more than happy to. You're not hopeless, and you should never think that you are." Then, I remembered. "Speaking of which, you promised me we'd look at some therapist offices today."

"O-oh, yeah…" She looked away from me.

"I know you aren't too fond of the idea, but it has to be done. Just one visit, it doesn't have to be a regular thing or anything, alright?" I placed my hand on the side of her face and turned her gaze towards me.

"Okay…" Her face got red, and she looked away once again.

I smiled at her. "Good, then go ahead and hop in the shower. I'll find some offices, and get in after you're done."

"Alrighty then, I'll go as quick as possible!" She said, getting up to go upstairs.

"It's alright. Take your time, we have all day."

"That's not why I'm hurrying, silly~" She says in a teasing voice while going out of view.

 _Then, why did she feel the need to hurry?_

.

 _(Alright, so everything up to here was pre-made from when I worked on it during the summer. I actually had to continue the story from where I left off, otherwise it would've been an extremely short chapter, although it was a little shorter than the last four have been. This year, I've been very busy every day of the week, when it comes to work, my studies, and so on. I only have one day a week where I have nothing going on, and a few hours on one particular day. I've been having a lot of fun writing this story, and it makes me really happy seeing so many other people enjoying my ideas, so I'm going to keep doing this. I don't want to give a specific day or upload schedule because I may only be able to get a little bit done a day, or possibly even a week. I don't want to rush it and put out poor content. So, after this chapter, my hope is to put out a new chapter every week or two. I get a lot of inspiration from other writers, and one of my biggest disappointments is when a story ends, or when chapters take months on end to come out. I know everyone has their things going on, but when they put out such good stories, it's almost like going through a withdrawal. Maybe I'm just crazy. Anyways, long story short, I'm going to try my absolute best to get chapters out as soon as possible, but not rush them so they still have good content, and I'm going to make this story last as long as possible, although obviously all things must come to an end. I'm going to make this story into what I've wanted from so many other great stories that have been such an inspiration for me. If you've made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts. I really appreciate it. As always, thanks for reading, criticize the crap out of me, and I'll see you in the next chapter!)_


	6. Chapter 6

_(Well, this is the first time I'm 'back in the saddle' writing in 4 months. Let's see how my style has changed. I have lots of good ideas, and can't wait to share them with you guys. Enjoy!)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

.

Natalie went up to get in the shower 'as quick as possible', so while I waited for my turn to get in, I got the pamphlet from the dining room table and flipped through it. There were a lot more therapist offices around here than I thought. There were four of them, all varying in rating and distance, according to the pamphlet at least. One of the offices caught my eye though – an office where the therapist's name is Dr. Frazier. Dr. Frazier was the doctor who helped Nat when she was in the hospital. Could it be the same guy? It's likely, and we did like that doctor, so that's the one we'll probably go with. Unfortunately it was one of the furthest away ones, but it had a good rating.

 _I'll mention it to her when she gets out of the shower,_ I thought.

I went up to my room and gathered my things together. I'm the type of person that has to get their outfit together _before_ I get in the shower. It would probably be better for me to take my clothes in with me anyways that way Natalie could have my room to get dressed and do her hair and whatnot, and I wouldn't be in the way. I grabbed a pair of dark blue jeans, and a black long sleeve shirt on top, along with the other usual things like socks and boxer briefs as well.

It only then dawned on me that I probably shouldn't be upstairs while Natalie is in the shower, I wouldn't want her to walk out in just a towel and get spotted by me. It would give her the wrong idea. I grabbed my stuff I got together, and walked by the door to go down the stairs. I knocked on the door as I walked by.

"Hey Nat," I said through the door. "whenever you're done, use my room to get ready. I'll be downstairs, and I already have my stuff together, so just give me a holler when you're out of there."

"Okie dokie!" She yelled back.

I went back downstairs and sat on the couch, when I caught glimpse of my bookbag. I realized I both hadn't read anymore of _The Haunting of Hill House_ that Ada gave me, or even started the _Dragon Ball Z_ manga that Naomi gave me. I figured since I was already ahead with Ada, I could start on the manga. Manga is a little easier to read anyways, considering its mostly pictures complemented with the writing and dialogue on top of it.

I got through about half of the book before Natalie's voice rang out from upstairs, "Alright, I'm out!"

I marked where I left off (with a piece of paper, not by creasing the page, remembering Naomi's threats) and careful slipped it back into my bag.

As I walked into the still steamy, feminine smelling bathroom, I shut the door behind me, set my stuff down, and got undressed. It seems Natalie brought her own shampoo and everything. I'm not necessarily surprised, but I also didn't expect it. It's normal that a woman wouldn't want to smell like man, it makes sense. Although she lived a messy lifestyle, she was very hygienic. I can't remember a time when she smelled bad, she always smells good, has clear skin, and so on. Although she has suicidal tendencies, she at least takes care of herself pretty well. Hygiene wise.

I finished up in the shower, got dressed, and dried and brushed my hair. I stepped out of the bathroom, walked down the hall, and knocked on my bedroom door.

"You can come in!" Natalie's voice said through the door.

I opened up the door, put my dirty laundry in the hamper, walked over to where I keep my deodorant and cologne, and put those on. Natalie was doing her hair in my mirror, and had on some leggings and a lightly shaded pink t-shirt. I could see she had taken off her bandages. She still had a decent amount of bruising, but it wasn't bleeding, which was both a relief and surprising considering how recently she acquired that injury.

We made eye contact through the reflection.

"Whatchya looking at?" She asked, continuing to fix her hair.

"O-Oh, nothing. I was just seeing what you were doing." I didn't want to tell her I was looking at her neck, I didn't want to make her self-conscious about it.

"I'm going to try and cover what I can of my neck with foundation or something. I don't want anyone to stare…" She said. It seemed she was already self-conscious about it.

"Nobody is going to stare, you don't have to be embarrassed about it. Plus, we aren't really going to be in public that much, just in my car, then the therapist's office. Unless you wanted to go do something afterwards." I imply to her.

"Maybe we could do something, but I'm okay with hanging out at home too!" She left off, then continued. "Speaking of which, did… did you pick out a therapist?" I could tell she still didn't want to do this, but she knew I wasn't really going to let her _not_ go, at least not without a fight. She did make a promise.

"Well, there were four in total, but one that caught my eye was one that had a doctor with the name 'Dr. Frazier'-."

"That's the same name as the guy from the hospital." Natalie interrupted.

"-Right, which is what I was getting to." I said with a chuckle.

"O-Oh, sorry…" She said quietly.

"It's alright. It may not be him, it could possibly be someone he's related to, or even just a coincidental same last name. Anyways, it has the highest rating, which is another good thing. But the only downside is it's the farthest away. Are you alright with a little bit of a drive?" I asked.

She thinks for a minute, then asks,

"How far away is it?"

"According to my phone, about a fifty-minute drive."

"Eh, that's alright. As long as you're okay with it, you're driving, not me, hehe. Plus, if it's a drive with you, I can manage it." She smiles at me.

"Alright, it's settled then, we'll go to that one. I'll call and make an appointment for as soon as possible today." I smile back to her, poking her in the side, which makes her giggle. "I'll be downstairs making the call if you need me, alright?"

"Okay!" She says.

I went downstairs, and found my phone on the couch, where I had accidentally left it earlier. I copied the number into my phone, and made the call. Luckily, they had an opening for about an hour and a half from now, which was perfect. We could leave in about forty minutes or less. I went back upstairs to tell Natalie the good, or not-so-good news.

"We have an appointment in an hour and a half." I tell her.

She meets my gaze in the reflection, looks away, and mutters "Okay…"

"It'll be fine, I'll be there with you, and it won't be that long. Right?"

"That's not… entirely it…" she says quietly.

"What is it?" I ask.

She's quiet for a little bit, but meets my questioning gaze and gets red in the face before finally giving me an answer.

"I'm already worried about it, but I don't want to waste somebodies time with my own petty issues. It's selfish. I'm not worth his time…"

"Okay, first of all, they get paid to listen to people's problems, Nat," I gave a light laugh. "And also, it's not selfish, nor are they 'petty'. Your problems are just as important as anyone else's. You're worth all the time in the world."

She keeps her eyes off me, quietly brushing out her hair still.

I walked up behind her, gently pushed her hand down from her head, and gave her a hug from behind, looking at her reflection.

"I promise you, you're worth it. Don't let anything make you think otherwise."

She stares at me through the mirror, then turns her head to look at me, then turns the rest of her body around to give the hug back.

"…Y-you're worth it too… thank you…" she buries face into my chest. I lightly run my hand over her back and drop my arms down around her waist.

"You smell nice…" she says quietly, loosening her grip around me.

"Uhm, thanks?..." I say.

Her knees buckle, and I catch her, holding her up.

"Woah, hey, are you alright?" I ask.

"You're really warm and comfy, its making me sleepy…" She says, in a quiet voice.

"Oh my goodness, you are too precious for this world." I tease her. She really is effortlessly adorable. I sat her down on my bedside. "Am I gonna be able to hug you in public and stuff without you falling asleep on me like this?"

"Hehe, I'm sorry." She slowly stands back up, and goes back to brushing her hair, and getting ready. I said that as a way to get an answer about the 'what are we' question, but didn't quite get an answer. Oh well. I stayed in the room to keep talking to her while she got ready.

The rest of the time before we got in the car we spent talking about things like the literature club, and how we at some point have to tell her mom about everything that's going on. After she finishes with her hair, puts on some socks and shoes, and covers what she can of the bruises on her neck, we head downstairs. We both grab a hoodie of mine since it was little colder out today, and Natalie didn't bring her own. I slip mine on, help her with hers, and we go out to the car in the garage. After sitting down, Natalie brings her legs up to the seat, and puts her legs and arms inside the sweatshirt before putting the hood up. I turn the heat on. She looks over at me and smiles guiltily.

"You get cold way too easily." I say with a light chuckle.

"I can't help it! Luckily your hoodies are so warm." She says.

I back out of the driveway, and get on the road. I asked Natalie if she was feeling okay, but she assured me she was fine. Once the heater starts to warm up, Natalie is asleep almost instantly. That whole sleep thing worries me sometimes. Is she not telling me about something? Is she getting enough to eat? Has she been sleeping since before that morning I found her? These are all things that are too hard to just bring up out of the blue. It's like treading on thin ice. I'm not going to bother her about it during the car ride, she already has a lot to deal with once we get there. That's even if she wakes up before then.

.

We arrive at the office a little earlier than expected. I look over at Natalie to my right, who's still sound asleep. We're early, so I'll just let her rest.

After about five minutes of letting the car run, nudge her.

"Nat, wake up. We're here."

"…mm five more minutes…"

"I gave you five minutes when we got here, you gotta get up, sleepy."

"fineee…" She sits up, removing her legs from the sweatshirt, and putting her arms in the sleeves. It's been pretty noticeably stretched out, but I don't think she notices.

"You ready to head inside?"

"As ready as I'll ever be I suppose." She responds.

"It'll be fine, I promise." I reassure her.

We get out of the car, and make our way to the front door. Natalie is really quiet. I slowly reach out and take her hand. She grips it a little tighter than I expected. I knew she was nervous, but to what extent?

We go inside, and the woman at the desk greets us. I signed her in, and we go take a pair of seats closer to the corner, which Natalie picks. She pulls her legs up to the chair, similar to how she did in the car, but leaves them outside of the sweatshirt this time. She interlaces her fingers with mine on the armrest, leans her head on my shoulder, and exhales.

"I'm really proud of you. I'm glad you went through with this." I said.

"I wouldn't have done it if you wouldn't have convinced me." She says blankly.

"It'll be good for you, I promise. You just have to trust me."

"I do, I trust you. I'm not worried." She says.

Despite her statement, she was clearly worried. I think it's all just the whole opening up to somebody that isn't myself that she doesn't like.

We were quiet for a little bit, until she breaks the silence.

"I'm… I'm sorry I'm so weak." She says quietly.

"You aren't weak. Everybody has their issues. Some are just more fortunate than others I suppose."

That was a really terrible response, but what she said was just so unexpected I tried to give a good enough answer to make it seem like I wasn't taken aback by what she said. I want to be here for her, and look strong to help her, but I need to get better at talking to her to help her.

"I just feel like I'm putting you through too much. I made you join the literature club, then made you worry about me, miss class, stay overnight in a hospital, take care of me, and now drive me to this…" She says slowly.

"You aren't putting me through too much. Everything I've been through with you recently I've done based on my own decisions. I don't stick by your side because I feel obligated to, I do it because I want to."

She takes her head off my shoulder and looks up at me. I continued on.

"I feel like your full of self-doubt. You're so worried about causing me trouble or wasting my time when in all reality I love spending time with you. Now, granted, I would much rather it be at my house, or a movie theatre, or a restaurant, rather than the back of an ambulance or a hospital. But I really like you Nat, like, _seriously_ like you. Stop stressing yourself out, alright? Everything's is a lot better than you perceive it to be, despite what we've been through. I… I'm in love with you. I know I am in love with you because my reality is finally better than my dreams. Your presence is all I need to feel complete."

I take a deep breath, and lock eyes with her. Her mouth is slightly ajar, and she has tears in her eyes.

"I-I-" She's cut off.

"Natalie Patterson?"

We both look over and see the therapist call Natalie back. It wasn't the same doctor from the hospital, but he did look a little like him.

"It looks like he's ready for you. Go ahead, I'll be right here, waiting for you when you're done." I say.

"O-Oh… Yeah, O-Okay…"

She stands up to head in, but before doing so she turns around and looks at me. She looks like she wants to say something, but turns back around and heads in anyways, not to leave the therapist waiting.

One thing I worry about is hearing something I don't want to hear from the therapist. I mean, I'm almost certain she has some form of depression. But I notice she does have mood swings. Sometimes she can be cheery, and then the next moment it shifts to self-hate. Maybe it's just another form or side effect of depression? I remember something from my psychology class I took my junior year that said some mental illnesses are linked to other ones. Like, you could have depression, but that could also branch off into different anxiety disorders, and so on. I guess that's why we're here, to get it figured out.

One thing is for certain, I'm going to be there for her every step of the way, just like she was for me when my parents passed. In times like this, you need support from wherever you can get it, and I know that firsthand.

I'm probably just thinking about it too much. Natalie is right about one thing, I can worry myself too much. She's going to go in there, get the help she needs, we'll get this thing figured out, and go back to our normal lives.

 _But… can it ever go back to normal after this?_

 _Well, this should be awhile,_ I thought. I made sure to grab the manga Naomi gave me and put it in my car, so I went out to grab it. After I got it, I sat back down in the same chair, flipped to where I left off, and continued on.

.

After what felt like an eternity, but was probably just about an hour, the door opens, and Natalie comes out. She had streaks down the sides of her face. I start to stand up to greet her.

"Hey! How'd it-"

I'm interrupted by Natalie immediately pushing me back into my seat, putting her legs across my lap, and burying her face in my neck with her arms around me.

I was completely caught off guard, with my arms out to the side, afraid to touch her thinking I may make the wrong move. I eventually placed my arms in the most comfortable, comforting, and appropriate spot. She seemed really exhausted, or emotionally spent, breathing a little heavy. I couldn't tell whether it went well or not.

I looked past her to see the therapist standing in the doorway.

"I'll give you guys some time, but once you get a chance I'd like to speak with you for a moment. It won't take long." He says.

"Alright, I'll be back in a moment."

"It's okay, take your time. I'll be in the office down the hall, second door on the right." He gestured with his thumb, pointing behind him. He closes the door, and leaves us to ourselves.

"Did everything go alright?..." I asked hesitantly.

"mhm…" She responds quietly.

"Are… you alright?"

"mhm… just… recovering." She says softly.

I slowly and lightly ran my hand up and down her arm, letting her rest for a few minutes, while all kinds of questions flowed through my mind. What was the conclusion? Is she going to be okay? Why does he need to talk to me?

After a few more minutes, I nudged her, still a little hesitant.

"Um… are you gonna be alright if I go talk to him for a few minutes? I don't want to keep him waiting much longer."

"I think so. Just hurry back, okay?"

"I will." I smiled at her, looking into her weary, blue eyes.

I didn't want to leave her, but I really didn't want to leave him waiting any longer than he already had been.

I went through the door, walked down the hallway, and went in the second door on the right, like he said.

I walked in and shook his hand.

"Have a seat son, we have a little bit to talk about your girlfriend." He said, interlacing his fingers.


	7. Chapter 7

_(Time for some twists.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

.

"Have a seat son, we have a little bit to talk about your girlfriend." He said, interlacing his fingers.

In his room, there was the stereotypical lounge chair and a normal seated chair that you would see in therapist offices, then over to the side were two chairs and a desk, similar to how you would see in a principals office. He was seated behind his desk. He looked very similar to the Dr. Frazier at the hospital in the sense that they were both older gentlemen, African-American, and well-built for their ages. I wouldn't say that they could be twins, but certainly brothers at the least. After I greeted him, I sat down.

"Okay, I'm going to try and make this as simple as an explanation as possible. If you let me talk, I'll explain it the best I can." He states plainly.

"Alright, go ahead. I'm listening, sir." Did he get the wrong impression of me or something?

"Natalie has an odd, but not uncommon, form of depression. She has no self-worth, and as you're already aware, she's tried to take her life, with most of her reasons seemingly stemming from you. Now, I don't want you to believe that any of it is your fault, because it really isn't. She has an unnatural dependence on you, and I think that it would be dangerous to separate her from you." He stops, awaiting my input. I guess Natalie really did tell him the whole story.

"I'll help her in whatever way I can." I state firmly.

"I'm glad to hear that. If it's possible, I'd like you guys to live together for a little bit. I'm not saying you have to be constantly in her presence, but a great deal of your time should be spent with her, and then it should be reduced gradually so her dependence isn't as drastic. She most certainly won't be able to be alone, especially at night from what she's told me. I'm also going to prescribe her anti-depressants just to be safe, but those are completely optional." He pauses, then asks a question.

"There is one thing she wouldn't tell me. What is the parental situation? You two may legally be adults, but are you her only guardian?"

Uh oh. How do I explain that?

"Well… I'm not necessarily her guardian. We've been very close childhood friends for years. She never knew her father, and her mother is never home. She lives on her own. I do as well, but that's because… my parents aren't with us anymore." I say.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear about that." He stops and thinks for a while.

Its silent for a while, as if he's trying to think of what to say next.

"She wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you, you know that right?" He says

"Y-yeah…"

"She knows that too. I think that's why she's so dependent, however those are feelings even I can't explain. There isn't really much more to go over with you though. Keep an eye on her." We both get up from his desk. "Pay extra close attention to her. I think there may be some things you're missing that could be… beneficial… for the both of you. She may have some feelings that she has built up over time. I don't think we should leave her waiting any longer." He smiles at me.

We walk to the door, and he stops me one more time.

"Listen, I understand you two have been through a lot recently. Don't worry about payment, this session is on me. Feel free to come back if you guys ever need it. Go be with her."

I was completely shocked. "R-really?" I shook his hand firmly. "Thank you so much. It means a lot to us, really!"

"Well, my brother put in a good word for you." He winks at me. "Have a good day now son, stay safe." And with that, he nudges me out the door.

I walked back into the waiting room to see Natalie still in the way I left her, with her legs pulled up to her chest, and arms around them. She perked up when she saw me re-enter the room.

"I'm back." I smiled at her.

"Are we able to leave now? What did you guys talk about?" She asked, surprisingly energetically.

"We'll talk about it when we get home, alright?"

"Home?" she asked

"Yeah. Long story short we're going to be living together for a while."

She lets out a dramatic gasp and a smile shoots across her face.

"W-what?! Really?" She says.

"Geez, you're excited, aren't you?"

"N-no… okay maybe."

I chuckle lightly to myself.

"Let's get home."

She takes my hand in hers and we walk out to the car. I get in, start the car, and leave the parking lot.

"Well, while we're out, do you want to stop somewhere to eat? We haven't eaten since we left the house."

"Hmm… sure!" I knew she wouldn't turn down food.

We pulled into a place just off the highway. It was one of those steakhouses that wasn't advertised as a steakhouse but was pretty much known to be one. I got, obviously, a steak with some assorted vegetables and a baked potato. Natalie got chicken fingers and fries, which was predictable. I told her about what the therapist told me, but left out the part where he called her dependent. I did tell her about the optional medication, but I explained to her that they would make her not feel pain when she was sad, rather than call them anti-depressants. Luckily, she didn't catch on to what they really were. Somehow.

"So we get to live together, huh? That's gonna be awesome! It'll be like a never-ending sleep-over!" She states, taking a bite of one of her chicken fingers.

"Yeah, I'm excited. But we still have to decide: which house are we staying at? Mine, or yours?" I ask

"Hmm. Let's stay at yours. You have more things to do at your place, it's always cleaner, and your bed is comfier." She smiles at me.

The two of us talk more about how nice the therapist was, and I told her about how the two doctors actually were related, and he didn't charge us. We also talked about what work we could make up for school when we get home, and other things we could do, although knowing Natalie we probably won't end up doing any school work. After we finished our meals, we paid, and got on the road again.

After a drive that felt way quicker than it should've, we were home. We walked inside, took our shoes off, and Natalie went straight for the couch. I checked the time on the kitchen clock: 9:27. It was still the weekend, so it wouldn't have hurt to stay up late. I figured I could ask Natalie and see what she wants to do, should she be up for anything.

"Hey, do you want to do anything in particular?" I asked

"Not really, I'm kinda tired from that trip. Can we watch something on the big TV?"

She slept a good deal all day today, but after I realized what she probably went through at the therapist, I decide not to tease her about it.

"Yeah, that's fine."

I took a seat next to her on the couch, and turned on one of our favorite shows we used to watch when we were younger. It's one of those animes that's appropriate for all age groups, that once you're a fan it's basically a 'for life' thing. Natalie liked it, but she wasn't as big of a fan of it as I was. She was laying on her back to my right, with myself sitting upright in front of her.

This is strange. The therapist (I'm trying not to say 'Dr. Frazier' since that could be the therapist or the doctor to avoid my own confusion.) didn't say anything about Natalie having any mood swings, but just earlier today she was pretty lovey-dovey, and then other times it just feels like we're friends. We haven't necessarily stated whether we're dating or not, but we haven't said we _aren't_ dating either. I mean, we've held hands, hugged, and once even said we loved each other. Were those just 'in the moment' moments? I still can't always tell how she feels.

 _Pay extra close attention to her. I think there may be some things you're missing that could be… beneficial… for the both of you._

That thing he said earlier echoed in my head. What did he mean by that?

"NICK!" Natalie yelled at me.

I jumped back, nearly falling off the couch.

"Jesus! What? Are you okay?" I ask.

"You were spacing out and staring at me… I don't think you were even able to hear me."

"O-Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize…"

"Is everything alright? Did you wanna talk about anything?" She asks.

"No… Not particularly." I say unconfidently.

She squints her eyes at me, she could tell I was lying.

"Alright, that's it." She says finally.

"Wha-?" I'm cut off by her sitting up, grabbing my arm, and pulling me down on top of her, hesitantly. I could feel the blood rush to my head.

"You don't have to… be so shy… you know?" She says.

I was laid over top of her, with her eyes meeting mine, and then she looked away.

"I just… I'd do anything for you… you know that, right?" she asks.

That's when it hit me what she was implying.

"Woah, Nat. You don't have to do anything you don't want to. I don't expect it either." I pushed myself back up, looking her in the eyes again.

She stayed quiet, and put her arms around my neck, pulling me down into a hug. I turned myself on the couch to where I was off to her side, facing the TV.

"Just relax, alright? Everything's fine. Let's just watch TV." I'm on my side, and she's still on her back. She's obviously bothered, because she feels like she owes me. I decide to push my luck to make her feel better.

I leaned my head down, and planted a small kiss on her forehead.

"I promise, I'm happy. You're fine." I smile at her, blood again rushing to my cheeks.

Her face instantly gets red, and she covers her face, obviously smiling behind her hands.

 _I think I did alright_ , I think to myself.

We spent the rest of our night basically cuddling, or… spooning? Whatever you want to call it, on the couch, watching our show in mostly silence, enjoying each other's company. It was so nice to have her right there with me. She was really warm, and smelled so nice. It felt like… home, to be with her. It felt like there was no bad in the world with her in my presence. Aren't I the one who is supposed to be helping her?

.

It was around time for bed. Natalie and I both got dressed into sleepwear (in separate rooms) and rejoined in my room. Natalie made it obvious that 'yes, she was completely okay with still sharing a bed' and especially after the time we spent on the couch, I believed she really wouldn't mind another night. We got into our usual position from back in the hospital, with myself on my back, and her mostly on top of me with her legs wrapped around mine.

.

 _Death. It seems almost as if it is better than life sometimes. Would you want to know you are going to die before hand or die suddenly without warning? What happens after death? Life is meaningless. You are put upon this earth, then you die. But what happens when the one thing you look forward to most is what you should fear? If someone you loved was killed in front of you, but someone created a copy of them that was perfect right down to the atomic level, would they be the same person and would you love them just as much? What matters, and what doesn't? Where does self-worth come from? Is suffering necessary for human life? Death is a naturally feared thing in life, yet can be so invitingly attractive to end suffering._

 _What's important to you?_

 _Open your eyes, Nick._

 _Just how replaceable are we?_

 _You should probably wake up, before you forget how to._


	8. Chapter 8

( _Hey all,_ _ **I made an Instagram**_ _page for anyone who would like to_ _ **follow to stay updated with the story progress**_ _(_ _ **The Instagram is:**_ **corvokage** _). I don't like the idea of not being able to communicate why certain chapters take longer than others, or why a chapter is taking longer than normal. In addition to that, it lets me communicate with viewers,_ _ **and I'm thinking about starting some polls on which way you guys would like the story to go,**_ _so on and so forth. I have some things about the story I wish I didn't do, and some things I wish I would have done. So give it a follow if you'd like, that way you can get some insight into what's taking so dang long whenever I don't upload! Anyways, onto the next chapter. Things are starting to get… interesting.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

.

My eyes shot open in the middle of the night, accompanied with a short, sharp gasp.

My head was absolutely killing me, I swear I could feel my heartbeat in my skull. It had also felt like I hadn't been getting enough air, like something was choking me in my sleep. It couldn't have been some kind of sleep-apnea either, because I don't snore in my sleep. It felt like I was being crushed, even though nothing was on top of me. Natalie had shifted off to my side rather than half on top of me, the way she did the last night, and the only thing over me was her arms. Natalie isn't even that heavy, but this feeling was different. Like my chest was going to collapse in on itself, and I couldn't move.

 _Is this sleep paralysis?_ I thought.

Luckily my gasp hadn't woken Natalie up. She was still sound asleep, which was nice considering she hasn't necessarily been able to hold her sleep lately. She slept a good amount the day of the therapist visit, but I caught her waking up in the middle of the night the last two nights she's been at my house.

What do I do at this point? I don't want to wake her. I'm the one that should be worrying about her, not vise versa. It's not like I'm immobile, I can still feel myself breathing, I can move slightly without waking her, and I'm aware of my surroundings. But, something is off.

 _If I was having a heart attack I would've known by now._ I thought to myself. _Nothing is wrong, don't make Nat worry, go back to sleep._

I closed my eyes, but I couldn't sleep, the discomfort was unbearable.

 _W-what on earth is going on?_

I noticed I was shivering slightly, not out of fear, but out of confusion and uncertainty. I felt Natalie's grip around me tighten. I still haven't woken her up, but she wasn't helping my situation either. Is it okay to freak out? I feel like I should be freaking out.

 _Natalie needs strength. What kind of man are you to be waking up a girl in the middle of the night because you don't feel right? She needs you. Don't worry her._

My mind kept repeating these thoughts in my head. Definitely Dad's teaching resurfacing in there, that's for sure.

I realized we have school in the morning, and figured I probably would be needing more sleep, but fortunately, after checking the time, it was just early enough to get up and not get questioned by Natalie. She knew I was an early riser. Plus, after I get ready I can make us breakfast and everything. She wouldn't be able to tell that something was wrong, it'll just look like I got up a little earlier than normal. Or at least, I hope it seems that way.

Head still pounding, I slowly slid out of bed, careful not to disturb Natalie's sleep, and tucked her in under the covers. I got some clothes together, and made my way out of the bedroom to start getting ready for school.

As I took a hot shower, I started to feel a little better physically, but my head still hurt. I sighed as I got out, dried my hair and body, and got dressed. I walked back into my room to find Natalie turned over, facing the doorway from the bed as I walked in.

"You're up earlier than usual." She said in a groggy, quiet voice with a smile. She had the blanket draped up over her head to block the light. I shut the door behind me.

I hesitated, formulating my response, then responded, "Yeah, I woke up before the alarm went off, so I figured I'd silence it and wake you up on my own, but it looks like I accidentally woke you up already…" I rubbed the back of my neck. "I'm sorry."

She looks me over, then responds, "It's alright, it was the shower that woke me up."

"What do you want for breakfast before school?" I asked.

"Ugh… school." She said, quite literally rolling out of bed. "Take a guess. What do you think I want?"

"Waffles and toast." I said immediately.

"Spot on!" She said, beaming at me, "you know me so well."

"Go ahead and hop in the shower and get dressed. I'll start breakfast. Take your time though, we are earlier than usual."

"Alrighty!" She says, with a little bounce in her step as she makes her way to the bathroom. The thought of breakfast must've excited her.

It's only been a day since we've officially been living together, and already she seems so much better. I hope she's feeling better and that I'm doing what's best for her.

I feel really guilty about not telling her about my morning fiasco, but I know it's for the better. I don't want to stress her out and give her something else to be worried or sad about.

' _You should probably wake up, before you forget how to.'_ The thought made a chill run down my spine.

After a few minutes had passed, I finished making everything, and set it all up on the island in the kitchen. I wanted to change things up a little, rather than eat at the table like we did the last morning. Almost as if on que, Natalie came down the stairs and took a seat on one of the stools. She had her school clothes on, but her hair was wet. I guess you can see where her priorities are at.

"You sure you don't want to dry your hair first?"

"I smelled the food and decided it was more important, hehe." She states.

I sighed, and shook my head with a smile. "You never change." I said, poking her side.

We both finished eating, and I washed the dishes we used while Natalie dried and brushed out her hair. I set our bags by the door.

After a little while longer, it was almost time to go. I yelled to her to let her know, and she came downstairs a minute later. We headed out the door, and started our walk towards school.

We hadn't been to school in quite a while due to everything that had happened. Luckily her and I had most of the same classes, although at different periods, so all of our work up until we were gone is finished and taken care of. I figured I'd take this time to ask her some things about our… situation.

"So… I think its time to address the elephant in the room." I said as we started walking.

She looked up at me with her bight blue eyes, and nodded without saying anything.

"As far as missing school goes, I believe we'll be fine. The teachers don't really bother us much about that, especially since we're seniors.. You even did a pretty good job of covering your bruises, anybody who doesn't know about what happened will have no clue." She really was good at makeup, despite the fact that she doesn't normally wear too much of. "But what do we tell the girls at the literature club? Have you talked to them at all?" I asked

"No. Well… not really. All three of them texted me separately and asked if I was alright, but that was it."

"You didn't tell them anything?" I asked.

"All I said was that I'm okay, and I would explain it my first day back to the club. They all accepted that well enough I guess." She stopped, then added "Naomi asked about you." She said plainly.

She asked about me? Why?

"Really? That's surprising. I thought she liked me the least of all of them."

"You'd be surprised, they all like you a lot. I figured you'd catch on to that, at least." She pauses, then adds, "You can be pretty dense sometimes." laughing to herself.

"Hey!" I exclaim. We continue walking a little farther.

 _They actually like me? I'm glad I'm at least fitting in._

"I'm sure they were just excited to get a new member, so first impressions didn't matter. None of them like me like _that_." I said.

"I think you made a pretty good impression on them. Especially with the way you and Naomi were getting pretty friendly." She says straightly.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Was she talking about how I caught her from falling? "Do you mean when she fell off the chair? She would've gotten hurt! I would've done it for anybody else."

She looks away with an annoyed expression, blushing.

"Are you jealous?" I said with a sly smirk.

"N-No! You can talk to whoever you want, I don't own you. Just… save some time for me…" She says, shyly.

It's obvious she's jealous. I can tell she's pretty agitated about it, so I decide to drop it. "I will, don't worry." I say, patting her head.

She giggles, then responds, "I'll come up with something while at school today before club time. Don't you worry, I have it handled!" she says, beaming at me. The head pats must've brought up her mood. She's always liked those.

"We aren't going to tell them the truth?" I asked.

"No. Not yet at least. I don't…" She's quiet for a moment. "…I don't want any of them to be worried about me, I don't want to waste their time. Plus, it's kinda embarrassing."

"You wouldn't be wasting their time! They're your friends-" She looks over at me, and gives me a look as if to say 'I'm not arguing with you about this right now' "-but, that's your decision to make. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I'll support you no matter what." I reassure her.

"Thank you." She says, smiling at me. "I know I can always count on you."

I smile at that thought, as we make our way to the front gate, and onto school grounds.

"I'll see you at lunch, and then the club. Alright?" I said.

"Sounds like a plan!" She says, giving me a thumbs up, and a half-hearted.

"Are you going to be okay? You haven't been away from me for a good amount of time before."

"I think I'll be okay. I'll see you in the halls in between classes, and we have lunch." She says, but I can tell she's uneasy.

"I'll come to you after every class just to check in with you." I say.

"Y-you don't have to… eheh, you worry too much about m-"

I pressed a finger to her lips and cut her off.

"Don't even say it. We talked about this. I'll see you later, okay?"

"O-okay."

We say our goodbyes, and part ways to our classes. Luckily, we didn't get any kind of interrogation about our absence from any of our teachers on our way to our homerooms.

Natalie has been a little distant to me this morning on our walk over to school, but I don't blame her either. I think she's just trying, or going to be trying, to get back into her façade that is her happy self. It's not that she isn't happy, or that that isn't her normal state, but she hasn't had to act in a while, and considering she doesn't plan on telling anybody the truth, she has to get back into it.

I never considered Natalie to be the jealous type though. I have to admit, it's kind of cute. But to think something as little as helping Naomi made her jealous? What is she going to think whenever I start reading manga with her, or read that book with Ada?

I'd be okay with sharing something with Marissa as well, but she hasn't necessarily approached me about anything, if you don't count the whole poem sharing thing since that's for the club. I have no idea how I'm going to regulate what time I spend with whom. Club time is only for about forty-five minutes after school, and if you don't account for club activities, it would take a whole club period just to spend time with one person.

What a mess… I don't want anybody to feel left out. I guess I should feel thankful though. Not many guys get in the unique situation of deciding how to manage their time spent with four different beautiful girls.

I'll be honest though, when I started at the club, I thought Naomi was pretty cute, just my type even. But I really connected with Natalie these last few days, and I had always liked her when I was younger. But… if Natalie hadn't done what she did that day, would her and I be as close as we are now? Would Naomi and I have connected more if we had gone to school those days, and Natalie hadn't tried to take her own life?

Natalie and I aren't necessarily dating, it hasn't been said by either of us. But, we've done things that certainly make us more than friends. Would I have a shot to talk to Naomi a little bit? Maybe even Marissa. She's pretty as well. Arguably the prettiest there…

 _Wait…_

 _What?_

 _What am I thinking?!_

 _This isn't what I think! Right?..._

 _I love Natalie!_ _ **Just**_ _ **Natalie**_ _! Right?..._

 _Where… where did these thoughts come from?_

I shook my head as I walked into homeroom, and set my stuff down.

.

 _(Way back in chapter one, I had made the decision that there would be no outside forces acting upon Nick. Now that I've been writing a little bit, I think my feelings have changed. I have some ideas though, I don't know how I feel about it. Will I actually go through with it? Are these feelings Nick's actual feelings? What's up with Natalie? Find out in the next chapter of One Wish!)_

 _(God, I'm such a nerd.)_


	9. Chapter 9

_(I don't expect the Instagram to get anywhere, but if it gets a little more followers, I'll use it. If it doesn't, I'll simply post the updates within the chapters as I have been doing. As I said last chapter, the Instagram is:_ **corvokage** _._ _)_

 _(I've been having a little difficulty getting motivated to write with how busy I am lately, but I have TONS of ideas, many chapters worth of content in store. I've been a little exhausted with work and school, and I don't want to sacrifice quality for the quantity of chapters I put out. However, I'll get them out as soon as I possibly can. In the meantime, enjoy this chapter. It's a little longer as an apology for the wait. Some interesting things are developing.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

.

The school day went by as normal as ever. I sat with Natalie at lunch like I have been doing recently. The tables at our school weren't that large, so for two people to sit at them seemed relatively ordinary. She had mentioned that she plans on telling the girls at the literature club that she did go to the hospital, but it was to visit her grandfather who was dying, and the reason I went with her is because her mother wasn't able to be there in time, and she didn't want it to be just her. Since we knew each other since childhood, he knew me well, and he'd be happy to see me.

The only problem is he didn't know me well. He was never around either, similar to her father. In hindsight, it wasn't a terrible excuse, but it is sort of difficult to back up. We'll just have to hope that the girls have the decency to not ask about it. I never knew him, but Natalie's grandfather had already passed away. It really didn't feel right to make up such a lie, it felt disrespectful to him. I didn't say that to Natalie though.

.

After 8th period, I met Natalie after her class just like I did every period today, and we walked to the club together.

Natalie took a deep breath, swung open the door, and made her entrance.

"Hey everyone!" She said.

The three girls whipped their head around simultaneously, and made their way over to inspect Natalie.

"Are you okay? What happened?" Asked Marissa, first.

"O-oh, eheh, nothing really…" She said, giving me a glance that said, 'help me!'.

"You better not be hiding anything from us!" Naomi said.

I sighed and rolled my eyes. I had to save the situation. I decided I'd still use Natalie's excuse. I spoke up from behind her.

"I'm here too you know. Also, Natalie and I were at the hospital. Her grandfather wasn't doing too well, so we went to visit him," I paused, and noticed I had all of their attention on me. I felt apprehensive, but kept my cool. "her mom wasn't going to be able to make it on time, so we went to spend time with him in his final hours. That's why we weren't here at the end of last week."

The three girls took the information in, and Ada and Marissa brought Natalie into a group hug, with Naomi standing off to the side. I'm guessing she's not the hugging type?

"I'm so sorry! I didn't know!" Marissa said.

"If you need anything, don't be afraid to ask any of us, we're always here for you." Ada said reassuringly.

"I-If you need me to bake anything for you sometime, just lemme know." Naomi said, unconfidently.

"Thank you, you guys. I'm glad I can count on you." Natalie said with a short smile.

After the girls spent their time catching up, discussing what they had done in our absence and paying no attention to me, everything was back to normal. They had shared poems for the two days we were gone, and were practically used to it, and were making it an every day thing now. I wasn't too keen of the idea on having to write a poem every day, but I didn't say anything about it. Natalie seemed pretty excited about it, and I already had one written for today from back when we were at the therapist office and I had some time to do it, so it wasn't like I had to write a new one right this second.

I moved over to the desk I normally sit at and went to put my bag down, when I was stopped by Naomi.

"Hey! Thanks to you being gone, we have a lot to catch up on now with the manga! I hope you read what you were supposed to." She exclaimed, hands on her hips.

"I did. I'm sorry I wasn't here, but I had to be there for Natalie. It's not something any of us can control."

"W-Wait, I didn't mean it like that. I'm just saying… Never mind. Can we read some more today?"

"Sure, I guess so." I reached into my bag, and pulled out the manga. She instantly snatched it from me to check for damage. "I know how to keep things nice, you know."

"I'm sure you do. But you can never be too safe!" She made her way over to the spot beneath the windowsill on the floor, sat down, and patted the spot next to her, holding the manga in her arms.

"What, you don't trust me?" I asked teasingly, sitting down.

"I-I trust you! I-I mean, no I don't! I don't trust anybody! You can never be too careful!"

"Geez, relax. I'm just messing with you, silly." I nudged her with my elbow.

"I-I know that! Just sit down and read this stupid manga with me already now, dummy."

"Oh, so now it's stupid?"

"You know what I mean!"

I laugh to myself lightly, and we open the manga and begin reading the pages. She's already read this manga, so we start where I last left off, about halfway through it. Last time, she had managed to doze off on my shoulder, but this time she was getting really involved, and I kept catching her taking quick glances at me.

She laughs to herself. "I forgot that happens. It's been so long since I last read this one."

"Yeah, it's always nice to revisit old things you've read."

"Shh, keep reading!" She snaps.

I decide not to mention how she was the one who talked first.

She obviously is very passionate about manga. It's kinda cute how she gets so entranced by it. The rest of the girls have seemed pretty uninterested in it, so it must make her pretty excited to have someone who finally shares an interest in it. It really is a good manga, I'm excited to read the next one as soon as we're done with this one.

After a few more minutes of reading, I noticed Naomi wasn't making anymore snark comments about the manga. I glanced over to her, to find her staring into nothingness in Natalie and Marissa's direction. That sparked my interest.

"You good?" I asked, nudging her.

"…Huh? Yeah, I'm fine. Why?"

"Well, you seemed like you were spacing out. And you weren't reading along anymore." I said.

"Well… Y-Yeah, I'm fine." She said

"That didn't seem like a very confident answer." I said. She looked away from me. "You know you can talk to me if anything is wrong, right?"

"I know that! I said I'm fine. Where is this all coming from? Dummy." She said, defensively.

"Alright, okay. I was just checking on you. I'm sorry if I was a little forward."

"It's fine, let's just-"

She's cut off by Marissa.

"Okay everyone! Let's share our poems now with the time we have left."

"Ugh… I guess we can continue tomorrow. Don't you forget to read a little more though. I like re-reading the old stuff, but it would be better if you caught up as quick as you can."

"Alright, I will." Giving her a thumbs up, I stand up. I held out my hand, but she gets up on her own.

I walked over to pull my poem from my bag.

 _Who do I share with first?_ I thought.

Naomi will definitely be the most critical, might as well save her for last. I'd like to impress Marissa since she's the club president, so I'll need feedback from another club member before presenting my poem to her.

 _So it's down to Natalie and Ada._

I think I trust Natalie the most out of everyone here, but something tells me Ada will have the best insight. She's pretty intelligent, and is obviously very knowledgeable in literature. I'll go with Ada, then Natalie, then Marissa, and then finally Naomi. Perfect.

I approach Ada, who was in the middle of putting away a book, and pulling out a notebook.

"Hey Ada, you wanna trade poems?"

"Trade? I mean, you can keep mine if y-you'd like, but I need to share with everyone first."

I chuckled "That's not what I meant. I meant you read mine, I'll read yours, and we can give each other feedback."

"Oh, of course, sure. Here's mine. Just to let you know, it's probably not my best work." She says, handing me her poem.

"I could say the same about mine. I'm not much of a writer." I retort back.

I handed her my poem, and started to read hers. Her handwriting was almost unreadable, but in a good way. She had a typewriter-like penmanship with a cursive flair. The poem itself had been written very well, and I could tell because I had no idea what I was reading. It was almost like a different language. Very descriptive, yet short, sad, and mysterious. I think the best word to describe it would be… melancholy. The only thing I could pick up from it is that it had a peculiar rhyme scheme. Compared to mine, her poem made mine look like a child wrote it.

"Ada, I'll be honest with you, your poem is very impressive. But I have no idea what it means. I feel like I'm reading something that was written in the sixteenth century."

She was quiet, taking in my feedback. I only then realized what I said could've been taken the wrong way.

"I didn't mean that in a bad way though! I mean that it's written very well! I just don't have that much experience in literature to decipher it." I said, frantically.

"Its okay Nick, I didn't take it that way. The reason it may be a little hard to understand is because I was going for a gothic, old English theme." She paused, then continued on. "Actually, when you said you felt like you were reading from a sixteenth century poem, that was sort of what I was going for! Not that area in particular, but older times, yes. You may have noticed it was written in the form of a sonnet?"

"…um… I'm gonna have to say I didn't notice." I didn't want to lie to her.

She went on to explain exactly what a sonnet was, how they were only fourteen lines long, and how there were three different common forms: Petrarchan, Shakespearean, and something called Spenserian, which hers was supposedly written in. I sort of tuned her out halfway through, since she can tend to ramble, but picked up just enough information to seem like I was listening.

"I'm sorry, I'm rambling again." She said, embarrassed.

"Oh, no it's okay! I was learning quite a lot from you. Your knowledge on this subject is really vast, it's impressive." I reassured her.

"W-Why thank you..." She looked away, blushing. "Yours was nice. Simple and... cutesy in its own way. It's actually very similar to Naomi's style. I bet she'll like it." She finally said.

"Cutesy? That's not necessarily what I was going for."

"Oh, that's not always a bad thing! It's just easy enough to get the point across, and keep the reader's attention. I think you did a fine job for your first time." She assured me.

"Thank you, Ada. It means a lot. I came to you first because I wanted to get the best feedback first, and you made sharing feel a little less difficult."

"O-Oh, that's why you picked me first?" She asks. "You thought my advice would be best?"

"Just don't tell anyone else." I said, giving her a wink. She looked away and blushed again, with a smile appearing across her face.

With that, I marched over to Natalie.

"Hey, Nick! Wanna share poems now?" She asked.

"Sure, let's have a look."

Natalie's poem was pretty straightforward. She had messy, but pretty neat handwriting. When we were writing these together, she finished surprisingly early, so her handwriting looked rushed. Her poem was, to put it simply, happy. It had an optimistic feeling, and an 'everything is going to be okay' kind of vibe. It had a rhyme scheme that reminded me of the old _Dr. Seuss_ books my mom used to read to me when I was a kid. So I guess you could say it had a pretty nostalgic feeling to it as well. I never expected her to be so naturally good at this.

"This is really good, Nat. I like it. It's fun to read."

"Thanks! I like yours too." She said.

 _That's it?_

"I'm sure it sucked, I've never written a poem before."

"It didn't suck! It's a poem made by you, and that makes it special! I know I'll like every single poem you give me without even reading it first." She said.

"That's funny, you said the same thing about my smoothies." I said.

"Ehe, it's like I like everything about you!" She said, pressing her fingertips together.

 _She's really hammering this happy act home… or… was she being serious?_

I smiled at her, and we took our poems back.

Next, I approached Marissa while Natalie and Ada exchanged poems.

"Hello Nick. Ready to exchange poems?" She asked, in a calm, soothing voice.

"Oh, I was born ready." I said with determination.

"Hoho, I like the enthusiasm!" She said.

Natalie and Ada both seemed to like my poem, despite it being nothing more than amateur, so it really had given me somewhat of a confidence boost.

Marissa's poem was… odd. Her handwriting was also very neat, like she had her own font in Microsoft Word and typed it up herself. However, I couldn't quite understand it. It used a lot of symbolism, and the placement of the words was quite literally all over the place. She certainly made use of the space the page gave her.

"Wow, yours is pretty good for your first time, Nick! You have a style very similar to Naomi's." She said, finishing my poem before I could figure out hers, or attempt to at least.

"Really? That's funny. Ada said the same thing."

"Have you shared with her yet?" She asked.

"Naomi?"

"Yeah, duh." She said, punching my arm lightly.

"Oh, no. I was expecting to get the most criticism from her, so I was saving her for last." I laughed, rubbing the back of my neck.

"She does have a tendency to be somewhat critical. I'm interested in seeing her reaction to your poem. I bet she'll like it! Although she won't willingly admit it."

I looked over Marissa's poem again.

"I'll be honest with you Marissa… I-I have no idea what's going on with your poem." I finally said.

"Haha, that's alright Nick. That's my intention with my writing. I really like to make use of the space in front of me, and leave the reader guessing. I've shown Naomi and Natalie and they both had no clue as well, but had different ideas as to what I was getting at." She paused. "I think next time I'll make it a little easier to read in between the lines. Thanks for your input though!"

"Huh, I didn't think of it like that. Well, in that case, you did a great job obtaining your goal. I'll make sure to be more analytical next time going forward." I said.

"Thank you!" She said, bowing forward slightly, with her hands behind her back.

We gave each other our poems back, and moved to our respective last person to share with.

"So you picked me last, huh? What, saving best for last or something?" Naomi asked, with a smug grin, her hands on her hips.

"Oh, me? I was just going from tallest to shortest." I teased.

I could hear a very faint 'oooohhhh' from Natalie in the back of the room.

Naomi glanced back at her, and she quickly looked away.

"You know what? I'll let you off the hook and give you that one. You only get one though. Be happy I'm in a good mood." She said. I just looked at her, surprised that I didn't get any heat back. "Gimme your dumb poem." She said, hand out demandingly.

We handed our poems to each other, her a little more reluctantly than I.

Her poem really was simple, and cutesy. Her handwriting was playful and bouncy, yet neat just like the rest of the girls. Her poem was deceptive. It was cutesy on the outside, but was hiding a deeper meaning within it. Her style was simple, so it was easy to pick up the message within. Hers was certainly the easiest to figure out and give feedback to today, that's for sure. But because it was Naomi, that made it a little harder to give any criticism, out of fear of what's to come.

"…You said you've never written before… right?" She asked slowly.

"Yeah, why do you ask?" I said.

"That explains it." She said.

"Um… what?" I asked.

"Yes… that's it!" She exclaimed.

"What?" I asked.

"Beginners luck, that's all this is!" She said somewhat loud. The other girls glanced over, and Naomi lowered her voice. "There's no way you could've written something this good. It's just beginners luck!"

"Honestly though, you're probably right. I thought it was terrible, but the other girls seemed to like it as well."

"I-I didn't say I like it! D-Don't get the wrong idea!" She said.

"We seem to have similar writing styles it seems." I said, handing her poem back to her. "I liked your poem though. It was easy to get the message. It isn't just something cutesy, it has a real underlying message that comes across beneath the surface."

"Oh my gosh, thank you. Everyone else just said 'oh, Naomi its so cute' like no, it has a real message to be seen! At least someone gets it." She huffs, and hands my poem back to me.

After the poem sharing, that concluded club time. We grabbed up our things, and departed.

.

Natalie and I were walking towards the house, when we noticed Naomi not too far down the street behind us.

"Doesn't she live the opposite direction from school? She never walks this way." I asked, nudging Natalie next to me.

"I'll call her over to us." We both stopped walking, and Natalie held her hands up to her mouth. "Hey! Come catch up!"

Naomi jumped a little, and started jogging to catch up to us.

"What were you doing back there? You could've called for us or something. Don't you live in the opposite direction from here?" I asked.

"Yes. I mean- No. I-It wasn't because I wanted to walk home with someone or anything like that. I just wanted to take a different route!" She stammers.

"Oh. Okay." Natalie and I said in unison.

We continue walking for a while when I realized that Natalie doesn't want any of the girls knowing anything of the recent situation, so it would probably be bad if Naomi found out we were living together for the time being. I decided to come up with an excuse.

"Hey, Nat. Do you want to come over? I have something I wanted to show you." I shot her a wink, gesturing at Naomi without her noticing.

"Huh?.. OH! Yeah, sure!"

Thank god she caught on. Naomi studied us.

"What is it?" She asked.

Shit.

"A… A secret that Naomi and I are going to bring for club time tomorrow as a surprise! So you can't know otherwise it'll spoil it."

"Oh. Alright, whatever." She said.

After walking a little while longer, we made it to our house. We said our goodbyes to Naomi, and went inside. After we were inside, I could see Naomi spin around on her heel, and start walking back the same way we came after seemingly studying my house for a minute.

.

The rest of the time we spent was just schoolwork, making and eating dinner, and writing our poems for tomorrow. Then, quicker than we knew it, it was time for bed. Natalie was acting normal so far, nothing off luckily. She was in bed before I was, and already out. I joined her after brushing my teeth and getting changed.

 _*tap tap tap*_

Right as I was climbing into bed, there was a light knock at the door.

 _Who would be here at this time? It's so late._

Careful not to wake Natalie, I climbed back out of bed, and made my way downstairs to the door.

 _*taptaptap*_

There were three more light knocks, quicker this time. I gently opened the door, to see to my surprise, Naomi.

"Um… Hey Nick. C-Can I come in for a minute?" She asked, uncharacteristically slowly.

I noticed she had some bruises on her left arm, and right leg. Noticeable ones. She had on a white t-shirt and a pink skirt on, and a drawstring bag over her shoulder.

"Yeah, of course! Is everything okay?" I asked, as she stepped in.

"U-Um…y-yes…no. Nothing is okay right now." She said, uneasily.

"Have a seat." I gestured at the island in the kitchen.

I got a glass of ice water for her, and set it in front of her.

"Thanks." She said, and drank half the glass in one sitting.

I leaned against the counter, and looked her over.

"So… what's up?" I asked, smiling timidly.

"I'm in a little bit of trouble…"

"How so?" I asked

"Well… I ran away from home… I don't have anywhere to stay."

"What? Why? Is everything alright?" I asked again.

"I-I just had to, I didn't have a choice!" She said, raising her voice.

"Alright, I'm sorry. Just keep it down a little okay? Nat-" I paused, " _people_ are sleeping."

"People?" She asked.

I sighed.

"Screw it." I said

"Huh?" Naomi said.

"It's about time word got out. Naomi, Natalie is sleeping upstairs." I finally said.

"What? Why is she here?" She asked, then concluded. "Don't tell me. You guys, you guys ar-"

"No, don't jump to conclusions." I stopped her.

I sighed again. Natalie would be pissed if she found out I told this to Naomi.

"The reason we weren't in school those last few days are… well… Natalie tried to take her own life. I found her the morning before school, and took her to the hospital. Long story short, we weren't in school because we were in the hospital after she tried to commit suicide. After a trip to a therapist, he recommend that we live together for awhile since we both don't have parents home, and so I can look after her."

Naomi was quiet for a good amount of time. "I… I had no idea… I have so many questions."

"I understand, but now isn't the time to discuss it yet. She wanted to tell everyone at the club on her own time, but I just needed you to know the truth so I didn't have to over complicate it. What matters is you, and why you're here." I said.

"Well… you were honest with me… so…" She trails off.

"…my dad hits me. He has for as long as I've been alive."

My heart skipped a beat.

"He hits you?.." I stopped. "Is that why you ran away?"

"I… I couldn't take it anymore. Every day it got worse and worse recently…" Her voiced cracked.

She continued. "He never feeds me anymore, either. I don't even know how I'm still alive."

I was shocked. This girl didn't deserve any of this. I… I know how she feels.

She started speaking between sniffles. "I followed you guys yesterday because… I needed to know where you lived. It was getting so bad. I promised myself if it happened again, I would grab what I could, and run. Run to the only place I could go. I-I don't have any family, and nobody I trust. I know we haven't known each other long but… but… you're my only hope. I don't have anywhere else to go. I have nobody. I'm alone. I-I…" She couldn't keep going. She folded her arms on the island, lowered her head and began sobbing.

I walked over, lifted her body from the island, and embraced her. I just held her there for what felt like forever.

"I-I don't remember the last time I was h-hugged…" She said at almost a whisper. She held on tighter.

I was choked up for a moment. Finally, I spoke up. "I'm so sorry to hear that this has been happening to you Naomi. You don't deserve any of that. You're more than welcome to say here with us. We have lots of room here." I ran my hand up and down her back, similar to how I do with Natalie.

Naomi was in no condition to talk, so I continued on. "Believe it or not, I know how you feel. I… I had abusive parents too." I released her, and showed her the scar behind my ear, that very few people knew about, not even Natalie. "And that's not all." I had a long sleeve shirt on, as I normally do. I pulled up my left sleeve to reveal my scarred arm. "You aren't the only one. And I promise you, you most certainly aren't alone. Not if I have anything to say about it."

"I-I don't even know what to say…"

She stared at me, then pulled me in for another hug.

"Don't worry about it. There's a guest room upstairs that you can stay in for as long as you like. You're always welcomed here, I promise. In this house, you're safe. I'll make sure of it."

She let go of me, and after a little silence, she spoke up again,

"T-Thank you so much… I'm indebted to you."

"Nonsense. Just be a little nicer to me, that's all I ask." I said, teasing her as always.

"I don't know, that might be asking for a little much." She joked.

We laughed, and then her stomach rumbled.

"Hungry?" I asked

She looked away.

"That's not something you have to be embarrassed about. You live with us now. If you want something to eat, just ask. Or hell, make it yourself. What's ours is yours."

"O-Okay… thank you." She said quietly.

"Tell you what, I'm going to head to bed. Help yourself to whatever you like in the kitchen. You can bake a whole wedding cake should you feel like it. The guest room is upstairs, first door on the right. My room is opposite to that, if you need anything, don't be afraid to wake me up, seriously." I didn't want her to get suspicious of the sleeping situation of Nat and I. "I'll share the room with Natalie and sleep on the floor, just knock if you need anything. Feel free to get yourself situated and make yourself at home. _Mi casa es tu casa._ "

"Um… Okay! I mean, again I can't thank you enough. I just…" She trails off, runs over, and hugs me a third time. "Thank you…"

"Ehe, you're welcome. I'll see you tomorrow morning when we get ready for school. I hope you have a good nights sleep. The bed in the guest room is immaculate."

"Okay. You too!" She said happily.

I headed upstairs, and walked into my room, locking the door behind me, and crawled back into bed with Natalie. She stirred in her sleep.

"…mmm. Why'd you get up? Was someone here?" She asked quietly.

"Oh boy, do I have a **long** story for you. I'll tell you in the morning. Let's just get some sleep." I said, ruffling her hair.

.

 _(Oh yeah, that's right. I went there. Natalie_ _AND_ _Naomi living with Nick? What kind of situations will this cause? I guess you'll have to find out in the next chapter.)_


	10. Chapter 10

_(Warning, this chapter will have some violence and more harsh language than usual.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

.

 _*taptaptap*_ There was a light tapping on my bedroom door.

"Hey guys? You should probably get up now. I made breakfast and I don't want it to get cold." Naomi's voice came through the door, followed by her footsteps going away from the door, going back down the stairs. She was up WAY earlier than I normally get up, and she woke us up before my actual alarm went off.

I rubbed my eyes, and sat up. Natalie turned over.

"Was… was the Naomi's voice?" She asked.

"Yeah, long story short, she's going to be living with us for a little while." I said, getting up from the bed.

"SHE IS _WHAT_?!" Natalie exclaimed.

"Relax! I can explain."

I went on to explain how she came over in the middle of the night, and asked to stay here. I also had to explain to her how I told Naomi about us two already living here together, and exactly the reason why Natalie was staying here.

"So you told her _everything_?" She asked, annoyed.

"Not everything! I just told her what you did, why we weren't in school, and that the therapist recommended us living together! She doesn't know anything about us, or even that we sleep in the same bed, I told her I sleep on the floor."

"That's not what matters. Why didn't you wake me up or something? We could've avoided telling her the truth!" She said.

"But… did we have to? She was really understanding, and was even worried about you!"

"I wanted to tell everyone _when I was ready._ " She said, sharply.

"Natalie, her Dad was _abusing_ her. Are you telling me you don't feel sorry for her? I know how she feels. How could I have turned her away? She's our friend!" I said.

"I… yes, I do feel bad… but…" She trailed off.

"But what?" I demanded.

"I just… I don't like the idea of her being here with us. Can't she stay in my house? Nobody is staying there." She said.

"No, she can't be alone. What if her Dad comes looking for her? She needs someone to protect her. She needs us, just like I need you, and you need me."

"And you would just put your life on the line for her? We don't know what type of person her Dad is, he could hurt you!"

I couldn't believe what she was saying. Did she have no faith in me?

"Yes, I would. I was vulnerable once. I know how she feels, and I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy." My voice cracked.

She looked me over. "Why're you so intent on defending her?" She asked, crossing her arms.

"It's not like that! I feel like I've justified my actions well enough, haven't I?"

She looked away from me. I continued.

"Look, I get it. I'm sorry that I told her about you, I shouldn't have said anything without your permission. I'm sorry. But Naomi needs our help. She doesn't have anyone else to turn to, and as far as I'm concerned, she is welcomed to stay in _my_ house for as long as she needs to. Everyone has their own right to safety and happiness." I said firmly. "She's my friend. She's your friend too, right?"

"Y-Yeah…" she said, unconfidently.

"Then **act** like it."

With that, I stood up, and made my way downstairs

Natalie wasn't acting herself this morning. How could she even have to _think_ about letting Naomi stay. How selfish was she? I've already done so much for her, and I would do more. But how, now that another person is in need, does she not want me to help her? I had to leave the room before I said something I would regret.

Naomi was already dressed in some nicer school clothes, and ready for school a few hours before school was even starting. And, on top of that, she made breakfast for three people. What time did she get up?

She had made waffles, eggs, toast and bacon, all cooked to perfection, and arranged perfectly on three different plates around the table, accompanied with milk. I didn't even know I had this much food in my house.

Natalie made her way down the stair shortly after me.

"Wow Naomi, this looks amazing! What's the occasion?" I asked.

"It's nothing special, I just wanted to do something as a way to say thank you for letting me stay here with you guys." She said, smiling.

Natalie and I took our seats with Naomi, and we all started eating.

"Natalie, I'm really sorry to hear about everything that happened recently. Are you okay? You can always talk to me if you need someone to talk to." Naomi said.

"Thanks. And I'm okay. I have Nick here to thank for that though." She said, standoffishly.

"Yeah, he's been a real life saver for us recently, hasn't he?" Naomi said, laughing lightly.

"Yeah…" She paused, and looked at everything Naomi had made on the table in front of us, then met my eyes, and turned to her. "Y-You can talk to me too if you ever need anything. And… although it's not my right to say, you're welcome here any time, all the time. I-I guess what I mean is I look forward to living with you." She said, with an innocent smile.

"Thanks! I look forward to living with you too." She said back, taking a bite of her eggs.

Naomi and Natalie do have one thing in common, they don't always like to show weakness to each other. The other night, Naomi was a wreck and pretty emotional, but now she's acting pretty happy. Granted, she may be in a good mood because she's finally away from her dad, but it's completely different than how I quite literally just saw her. Maybe the cooking put her in a good mood. I know she's a good baker, but had no clue she could cook just as well.

After we had all finished around the same time, Natalie stood up and walked over to the sink, putting her dishes away.

"Thank you for the food, Naomi. It was really good!"

"I-It couldn't have been _that_ good, but yeah, you're welcome I guess." She said, blushing and looking away.

That's more like Naomi.

"Do you want to hop in the shower first?" I asked Natalie.

"Yep! You take too long sometimes." She said, running up the stairs.

"Wha- Hey! Don't use up all the hot water!" I called after her, hoping she heard me.

"'Take too long' huh? What exactly do you do in the shower that takes so long?" Naomi teases with a smirk.

"Oh shut up. I don't even take that long. It's Natalie that takes long. She uses up the hot water all the time and forces me to take cold showers."

I stood up, and took mine and Naomi's dishes over to the sink, and started to wash them.

"Do… do you want any help with that?" She asked.

"Nah, I'm alright. I'm used to doing it on my own."

"That's weird. I'm not used to seeing a guy do dishes." She said.

"Well normally I cook our meals too, but you beat me to that this morning. It was better than anything I would've made anyways though."

We were silent for a little bit, myself washing dishes, and Naomi sitting at the table doing whatever, I had my back to her so I couldn't see her. I spoke up.

"Also, just so you know, I explained everything to Natalie about why you showed up, so… Yeah."

"Oh… okay, that's fine. She has a right to know."

She pauses.

"So... Can I ask you something kind of personal about her?" She asked.

"Sure, what's up?" I asked.

"What exactly happened leading up to you… finding her? And what was it like?" She asked.

Well, that was certainly personal. The cats already out of the bag, it wouldn't hurt to talk about it with her.

"Natalie wanted to tell you guys on her own time, but since you're a special case, I'll make an exception. But this conversation stays between us." I said.

She smiled when I said, 'special case' and nodded. I went on.

"The few days before I found her, I noticed she kept acting more and more out of character. I stopped in to see her, and we talked for a while, and she basically told me she has symptoms of depression, and that they only started kicking in after her and I started talking again, when she had me join the literature club. We're childhood friends, but we haven't hung out together since we were younger, and we hadn't talked in a while."

She nodded, thinking. "Okay, what about the day you found her?" She asked. This was starting to feel like an interrogation.

"Well… the day after we talked, I texted her in the morning and didn't get a message back. She normally answered right away, even if my texts had woken her up, she would've immediately texted back. I panicked. I ran to her house, let myself in, and found her… hanging from the banister in her room by her neck. Luckily the rope she used was weak, and I cut her down with a pair of scissors that were on her desk. She was conscious, but wasn't able to speak. I called the paramedics, and rode with her in the ambulance to the hospital."

"Holy shit…" Naomi was at a loss for words. I continued, again.

"I stayed in the hospital room with her after she was treated and spent the night, not only because I wanted to but because she asked me to as well. After we had stayed for a night, her voice was back, and the hospital let us leave the next day since the only damage she did to herself was hurt her esophagus and give herself some bruises and abrasions. I invited her to spend the night because I didn't want her to be by herself, then the next day we went to the therapist, and he said that she… depends on me? And that if she were to be separated from me it would be dangerous. So since neither of us have parents home, he advised us to live together. So ever since then, we've been living together."

"My god… Natalie is always so happy. I can't believe she would do something like that." She said.

"Yeah, me either." I said plainly.

Again, another awkward silence fell upon us, and Naomi broke it.

"Can I ask you a personal question about _you_ now?" She asked.

"Umm… I guess so." I said

"D-do you… do you like her?" She asked.

That was an odd question, but I figured I'd tell her the truth, why not.

"If you want me to be honest with you? I think I do, but at the same time I don't. I get a lot of mixed feeling when I'm around her, but I also don't know if I have feelings for other people or not. I've just been really confused about it all lately. We sort of confessed to each other the day before she… you know… but nothing came of it afterwards and we still act like friends and everything. Do you think it might've just been a 'heat of the moment' kind of thing? I ju-"

"Waitwaitwaitwaitwait, so you guys confessed, but you still act like friends, and you think you may like other people as well? Who else do you like? Who is it?" She asked, in a confusingly excited manner.

"Why does it matter to you?" I asked simply, turning to face her. To be fair, I was kind of annoyed that she interrupted me when I was trying to a heart to heart with her and trying to open up a little bit.

Her face suddenly got really red, and she lost her newfound confidence. "N-no reason! It's not like I-I was hoping it would be me or anything weird like that! D-don't get the wrong idea!"

"Umm… okay…" I said. "Anyways, yeah. I don't know what she and I are. At the very least, the absolute minimum, her and I are very close friends, especially with what's happened recently."

"So what you're saying is you're available?" She said, straightforwardly. "I-I mean, you guys aren't dating?"

"I guess so. Not yet at least. Why're you acting so weird this morning? Is everything okay?" I asked.

"Y-yes!" She stammered. "Very fine, actually, way better than fine currently, how are you?"

I just laughed lightly to myself, finished off the rest of the dishes, and put them away. Natalie was still in the shower.

"Hey, today I'm going to read with Ada at the club. I've been giving a lot of my attention to the manga recently and have been neglecting the book that she gave me. I don't want her to think I'm forgetting about her."

"Wha-? That's not fair!" She said.

"What do you mean it's not fair? Geez, if it's that big of a deal we can just read here at my house. You do technically live here now, and we will see each other after club time now." I suggested.

"I-It's not a big deal! I'm not worried in the slightest, but I mean if you're going to _beg_ me to read with you after club time like you're doing now, I guess I can read with you." She said, with a smirk.

 _What? She was the one who made it seem like she wanted to read with me. Why is she reversing it back on me?.. You know what? I'm not going to argue with her._

"Thank you Naomi. It would truly mean a lot to me." I said sarcastically.

"Ha! I knew you actually wanted to. I-It's not like _I_ was the one who wanted alone time with _you_ or anything, dummy." She claimed.

With that Natalie called down from upstairs, signaling she was out of the shower, and to give her 10 minutes before coming up to get ready because she was getting changed.

"I'm… I'm gonna go chill in my new room. Don't come upstairs cause Natalie's changing." She said.

"Alright, that's fine." I said.

Naomi headed upstairs, and I straightened out the rest of the kitchen.

Naomi seems to be getting used to staying here already. I mean, she called the guest room 'her room', so I guess she at least plans to stay a while. I'm glad though. Although her and I like to give each other a hard time, it is kind of nice to have her around. And hey, we'll get to read manga together outside of the literature club, and I was kind of looking forward to it. Natalie seemed like she starting to warm up to her being around, or at least was making an effort to warm up to her being around.

After I was done, I called up the stairs.

"Can I come up now? I'd like to get ready too."

"Yeah, you're all good!" Natalie called.

I went upstairs, and into my room to get my outfit for the day. Naomi was fixing Natalie's hair in the mirror in my room. So much for her 'chilling in her room'.

I picked out a gray long sleeved shirt with a black accent, and black joggers.

"Good choice!" Natalie said, I turned to her reflection in the mirror, to which she smiled at me. I smiled back.

"Thanks." I said simply.

"U-Um, yeah. That'll match well. I-I guess." said Naomi, refusing to make eye contact with me.

"Uh, thanks." I said, turning to walk out the door.

In what I imagine was probably about twenty minutes, I was finished in the shower, dressed, and starting to do my hair, when there was a knock at the door.

"Are you almost done in there?" asked Naomi.

"I've only been in here for like twenty minutes, you were ready so much earlier than us. What could you possibly need?"

"I didn't brush my teeth yet, idiot! I was waiting till after we ate!" She snapped back.

"Well then you can wait five more minutes. I promise I'll be out of the way by then."

I could hear her stomping away, followed by a "better be" or something of the sorts. I only just realized how difficult it's going to be to have to share the only bathroom with a shower among three eighteen-year-old high school students every morning. We'll find out some sort of system.

I finished getting ready in what was probably record speed, and headed downstairs.

Naomi and Natalie came down shortly after me. We grabbed our stuff, and started to head for the door, until Natalie stops us.

"Hey guys? I just have one more thing that probably needs to be brought up."

"Okay. What is it?" I asked.

She was hesitant, but eventually responded. "Well… Nick, that car outside is yours, right? Could we maybe drive instead of walk?"

Natalie and I looked at each other, then back to her.

"I mean, yeah. I'm okay with that. But why?" I asked.

"It's just… It's just my dad. I don't think he would come after me or anything, I don't feel safe walking out in the open. If he would come looking for me and saw me walking with you guys in the street, I wouldn't want him to hurt one of you guys…"

"Are you implying that he would try to hurt us if he found out you were with us?" Natalie suddenly asks, her normal innocent and happy tone shifting to an uncharacteristically serious one.

"N-No! Not exactly! I don't know. I just want to make sure I'm not seen by him, that's all! It's unlikely that, even if he were looking for me, he would even be in this area. He has no idea where I went."

I put a hand on Natalie's shoulder, and gave her a little nudge, then spoke up to Naomi.

"That'll be fine. Walking can take a few minutes, but if we drive, we'll be there in no time. It could make mornings a little easier as well because we won't have to get ready as early as well. We're killing two birds with one stone."

"Alright, thank you Nick." Naomi said.

We headed out the door, and walked to my car. It only had two doors, so I had to pull the seat back for one of the girls. They took the time to argue which one had to sit in the back.

"I call a shotgun!" said Natalie.

"Wha- that's not fair! I should get the front!" replied Natalie.

"Why should you get the front? You're littler than me! You'll fit past the seat better! I've sat there before, it's not bad at all." Natalie snaps back.

"Exactly, you've sat there before, so you can sit there again." Naomi says with a smirk.

"Nick!" They both said in unison, turning to me.

"What? Why is it my decision? Why does it even matter?! It's a minute drive. Probably less!"

They argued for a little longer after I couldn't pick between the two, and the came to the conclusion that Naomi would sit in the front after she threatened to never bake anything again for Natalie. As you can imagine, with her love of food, she complied and took the back seat.

After what was literally a minute drive, we arrived at the school. I let the girls out at the front entrance, we said our goodbyes, and I went to find a parking spot.

I parked down the road since I hadn't gotten a parking pass from the school's office yet. I walked through the front gate, and went to my homeroom, but not before stopping to get the pass.

.

Before I knew it, I was back in the club with all four of the girls. Everyone was in their normal spots, as the usual. I took a seat next to Ada.

"Oh, hello Nick. How are you?" She asked.

"I'm breathing Ada, that's all that matters." I said with a chuckle. "Do you want to continue our book? We haven't had the chance to read together for a while."

"Of course! That would be lovely. Let me fetch my book."

She got up from her seat gracefully, grabbed her book from her book bag, and reassumed her position.

"Where were we…" She said quietly to herself, flipping through the pages.

Her and I did exactly what we did the first time. We sat shoulder to shoulder, reading together, her a little faster than I. After I would finish, my hand would pass the page over to her hand, and the page would flutter down onto the other side of the book. It was somewhat peaceful. To just sit there, in our own silence and our own company, letting our minds experience tranquility together.

I noticed I wasn't looking at the page anymore, but rather, staring at her, looking down at the book.

"Did you finish this page yet? This one is taking you somewhat longer than you usually take." She asked.

My heart skipped a beat.

"Oh! Yeah, sorry." I said, passing the page over.

After getting through the third chapter, I checked the time and noticed it was almost the time that we normally share poems.

"Why don't we go ahead and stop here, we can pick back up next time. It's getting interesting though, I'm really enjoying the book." I said.

"Ah, yes. That's fine. And I'm glad." She said with a smile, blushing slightly.

She is acting surprisingly… calm, today. I wonder if she's finally getting used to me being in the literature club?

Before Marissa could announce it like she normally does, we were all actually ready to share poems already. I think now that everybody has done it, we weren't as shy about sharing.

The poem sharing processes went almost exactly the same as yesterday, with the only difference being the poems. This time I went from Marissa, to Natalie, to Ada, to Naomi. Everyone had written their poems in their respective styles, with the exception of Naomi.

I passed my poem to her, and she passed her to me.

I read through her poem.

 _Safety_

 _I feel those familiar feelings_

 _Those feelings, rushing through me_

 _The ones paired with beatings_

 _Threatening my safety_

 _I run, and run and run_

 _And go as far as I can, see_

 _But no matter where I go_

 _These feelings are always with me._

 _However, it has changed_

 _Those feelings that I can't see_

 _They truly aren't around_

 _Because it's you that is with me_

 _I feel safer when I'm with you_

 _Like nothing can truly hurt me_

 _These feelings, are certainly true_

 _You, are my safety._

It had Naomi's normal, simplistic writing style, that was for sure. Lots of repetition, similar sentence structure and end rhyme, and even a little alliteration. But it had some darker undertones, a reference to what I'm assuming is her father, and this seemed to be devoted to someone.

"So, Naomi, who'd you write this for?" I asked slyly.

"N-nobody!.. was it that obvious?.." She said quietly.

"Was what obvious?" I asked again.

"Nothing!" She snatches her poem back. "If you were going to make fun of me I wouldn't have shared with you!"

"Relax." I replied, chuckling. "I'm not making fun of you. I liked your poem. It was really well written, just like your last one. I just like to mess with you, that's all."

The poem was obviously written for someone. And I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I think I had reason to believe it was about me, allowing her hospitality in my home. At least that's how I read it. Although that's just an assumption, or a guess. It could be for anyone now that I think about it. I don't know her _that_ well.

"W-well of course you liked it! Someone with a feeble mind like yourself should be entranced by my poems!" She snapped.

I decided not to say anything back that could potentially hurt her feelings.

"That's exactly it Naomi, really hit the nail on the head with that one." I said sarcastically.

"W-Well… Yeah!" She crosses her arms and looks away.

I patted her head and smiled at her. "For real though, keep up the good work. You're an amazing writer, whether you believe it or not." I said confidently, looking her dead in the eyes.

Her mouth agape, giving me what seemed to be an expression that was either flattered or disgusted, she took a step back, and looked around the room. She then looks me back in the eyes, blushes and looks away, and turns to the first person she can find.

"…N-Natalie! I haven't shared with you yet!" She says, before scurrying off.

It really is fun to mess with her. She acts pretty tough, which I'm sure she is, but she's easy to fluster. Does that make me evil? I only do it because she has cute reactions. But seriously, I wonder who that poem was for? She obviously had strong feelings for whoever it was.

After everyone else finished sharing their poems together, everyone made their way out of the room, and thus ended another day at the literature club. Natalie, Naomi and I walked out to my car.

"Do you guys wanna go do something?" Naomi asks, after letting Natalie into the back seat.

"Like what?" I asked.

"I don't know. We could go see a movie, go somewhere to eat, you know, do somethin'." She said.

"Actually, there's a really cool coffee shop that just opened a few blocks away from our house that I've been wanting to go see. I heard they have really good food there too!" Natalie said, jumping at the chance to get food.

"I'm cool with that. Is that alright with you?" I said, turning to Naomi.

"Yeah! That sounds fun!" She exclaimed.

Following Natalie's directions, I drove us to the coffee shop, which was only about five minutes from our houses.

The shop was simply called "coffee" except the actual title was "Cof-E". It was obviously just built, and it looked very modern. Why did I not know about this? I guess I'm not a coffee fan, but if there's good food I thought I would've known about it.

I found a parking space, and we all made our way inside.

It was a spacious, yet quiet place. It wasn't very busy, but there were some people off to the sides mingling, some people with headphones in on their laptops, and more. There was a spiral staircase that led up to a loft where there were more tables, and even an outdoor seating area on a small part of the roof with couches and lawn chairs. It almost felt more like a bar. It was really trendy as far as coffee shops go and an awesome place, I couldn't believe it wasn't any busier.

"Woahhhh" Natalie and Naomi said in unison.

"You guys go ahead and order, I'll find us a seat." I said.

"Make sure it's upstairs! It looks so cool up there!" Natalie said.

"Yeah, I will." I assured her.

It was a little chillier today with the seasons changing, so I took a seat that was near a window indoors. Nobody was using the outside space anyways, so it would've looked odd if it were just the three of us out there.

Natalie came to find me, along with Naomi, both empty-handed.

"Did you guys not see anything you want?" I asked.

"N-noo…" Natalie said shyly.

It took me a minute to realize what was happening.

"You both don't have money." I stated.

Natalie looked away, pressing her finger tips together.

"I-I forgot to grab money when I left my house… although I didn't have any money to begin with…" Naomi said quietly.

I sighed, and pulled out my wallet. I handed Natalie a twenty.

"Thank you Nick!" She said, giving me a tight hug. Naomi had a jealous look.

"H-Hey!" She said.

We both turned to look at her.

"I-I just wanted to say… um… thank you too?" She said.

"Don't mention it. I'm used to having to pay for Natalie." I looked at her, to which she smiled embarrassedly. "I'll hold onto our seats, you guys go get what you want and when you come back I'll go get something." I said.

"Okay!" Natalie said, almost skipping away as Naomi followed. She seemed in a good mood currently, which is always nice. Maybe she was just happy to get out of the house for once.

Natalie came back with what looked like a smoothie, and a glazed doughnut with sprinkles on it. Naomi had some sort of coffee drink, and a breakfast sandwich. Looks like this place only serves breakfast foods, so it'll be brunch for us.

I went down the stairs to the counter and order my things after Natalie had given me the change they got from when they ordered. I got an egg and bacon sandwich, a cinnamon roll, and a glass of ice water.

I made my way back up the stairs to our table. Naomi and Natalie were sitting on opposite sides of the table. I sat down next to Natalie.

"How is everything?" I asked the girls.

"It was really good!" Natalie said. I noticed she said 'was', and saw that she had finished everything before I had gotten back. Jesus, she can eat.

"Yeah, it's good so far. I could probably make something way better than this though." Naomi said.

"Ha, I'm sure you can." I said to her. "Admittedly it's just nice to not have to cook something for once."

I took a bite of my sandwich.

"Woah, what did you get Nick? It all looks so good!" Natalie said, eyeing my cinnamon roll.

"A cinnamon roll and a sandwich. The sandwich is a biscuit, but has egg and bacon in it." I said.

She was practically drooling.

"Do you wanna try some?" I asked, even though I knew that's exactly what she wanted.

"eheh, I mean… if you don't mind…" she said quietly, sliding my cinnamon roll over in front of her, slowly.

"W-wait, isn't that like… an indirect kiss?!" Naomi said suddenly.

I thought about it for a moment.

"I guess. I've never thought about it that way. But Natalie and I always share our food. We've done it since we were kids. I've just never cared."

Natalie took a rather large bite out of the roll, and slid the plate back over in front of me, except she was blushing and wouldn't look at me. I picked it up, and also took a bite out of it, to prove a point to Naomi.

Naomi was flabbergasted, and then cleared her throat.

"W-well… do you want to… try mine?" She said.

"Didn't you say you could make something better? I thought it wasn't that great? Plus, I have my own sandwich." I said simply.

"Fine! It's not like I wanted you to try it and get an indirect kiss or anything dumb like that. Y-you wouldn't want it anyways! I could make you something way better that you would totally like!" She pauses as we stared at her. "Not that I want to make you anything!"

Natalie and I looked at each other and giggled. Naomi crossed her arms and looked away.

After we had finished our food, we threw our stuff away, headed out to the car, and made our way home.

.

I pulled into the driveway, and let Natalie out of the back seat on my side. We started to walk to the front door.

" **YOU!"** A voice yelled in our direction.

I turned around to see a car was parked on the other side of the road, and a man was on the sidewalk in front of my yard.

Naomi gasped, and hid behind Natalie, who was to my left, but closer to the door than me.

"Can I help you?" I asked.

"What are you doing with my daughter?" He demanded.

It was Naomi's dad, there's no other explanation. I was afraid this might happen.

"She's living with us. Is that a problem?" I said calmly.

"Yes, it is!" He began walking towards me. "I didn't give her permission to leave."

"I strongly advise you to stop right where you are." I said firmly.

He stopped, his angry gaze not leaving his face.

"I _strongly advise_ that you return my daughter to me before you get hurt, boy." He snapped, mocking me.

"She's eighteen, and an adult. You don't have jurisdiction over her anymore, and she can do as she likes." I said firmly.

"N-Nick…" Natalie said quietly. Naomi was crying in fear behind her.

"Take her inside." I said to Natalie. She nodded.

I continued.

"She will be staying here as long as she likes, and that's the end of it." I said.

"Excuse me? Where do you get off?! She my daughter and she will be coming home with me **tonight.** " He takes another step closer.

"Go home, Dad! I'm never coming back!" Naomi yelled through the door, behind Natalie.

It started to sprinkle outside.

"I know what you've done to her." I said plainly.

He stops.

"What did you say, you little punk? I didn't quite catch that." He asks.

"If you think I'm letting you get anywhere near her, you're sorely mistaken. I suggest you leave, because you're not getting the outcome you desire." I said.

He glares at me, then looks past me to the door, where Natalie and Naomi were watching.

"NAOMI ISLA ABERNATHY!" He shouts to get her attention. "I hope you're happy with your decision! Because now I have to beat the shit out of your little boyfriend here! It didn't have to come to this!" He says.

"That's quite the ambitious claim. Are you sure you can back that up?" I say.

"You just signed your death warrant, kid." He suddenly charges at me.

He takes a swing at me, to which I dodge, and shove him backwards.

He tuns around and takes another swing, which I counter which a swift punch to the gut. He keels over and coughs.

Its pouring now.

"As much as you deserve it, I don't want to hurt you. But I will if I have to. This is your last chance, leave now or suffer the cons-"

He suddenly grabs my legs, and brings me to the ground.

"You got a lot of nerve!" He shouts.

He brings a fist down into the side of my head, then the other side. I put both arms up to block three more blows. I manage to wiggle free, and deliver a kick to his chest. This knocks him back, and gives me some breathing room. I notice my ear is bleeding where he struck me. For an older guy, he does hit hard.

"Kick his ass, Nick!" Naomi screamed from the door. Natalie covers her mouth with her hand.

He stands back up, and charges once more. I side step his charge, and trip him to the ground. This time I'm on top.

"Where do you get off, abusing an innocent girl?!"

I strike him across the face.

"What type of man hits a woman?!"

I hit him again, harder this time.

"What sorry excuse of a man, doesn't provide for his own daughter?!"

I push his hands out of the way of his face, and land a blow right on the bridge of his nose.

"What kind of parent displaces their anger onto their child?!"

Another blow.

"She's done nothing to you, and you've made her life a living hell!"

Another hit, harder than before.

"You're worthless. An angry man with no shame. _Your own bad energy will be your undoing!_ "

I land another final hit, right into the side of his head.

I stand up, and stand aside.

"Leave. _Now._ " I demand.

He pants, speaking between breaths. "Alright kid, you win, just let me-"

He suddenly stands up quickly, pulling a knife from his jacket, and slashes diagonally from the left part of my stomach diagonally upward to the right part of my chest, cutting my shirt open and my body as well.

"NICK!" Natalie and Naomi yell in unison.

It was a sensation I don't think I'll ever be able to forget. It burnt like hell. It was raining, but I felt like I was on fire.

I take a few steps back, then fall to my knees.

"You act like you know it all, but your ignorance will lead to your down-"

I side sweep his leg, and he hits the ground again, dropping his knife. I pick it up, and plunge it into his thigh, purposely, in one swift motion. I wasn't going to kill him. He lets out a wail as I pull the knife back out.

I stand back up, and stomp on his new stab wound.

"I'm not saying it again. Leave." I say, speaking between breathes.

He stares at me through a black eye, and grimaces as he stands up. He limps back over to his car, and drives off.

"This isn't over!" He yells back at me.

I threw the knife aside, and walked back over to the front door. I opened up the door, and went inside, only to be greeted by Natalie looking me over.

"N-Nick, you're hurt really bad! We need to take you to the hospital!" Natalie urges.

"D-don't worry about me, I'm fine, really." I try to reassure her.

"You have a gash from your stomach to your chest! You're bleeding! What part of this could be fine?!" Natalie says.

I started to get really woozy

"I'm… I'm…"

I fell to my knees once again, and hit the floor.

.

 _Oh god… my head…_

 _And… my chest…_

 _What happened?_

I woke up on the couch in the living room. I didn't have a shirt on, and my core was wrapped in… old clothes? My head had a towel around it, covering my right ear.

I looked around the room. Naomi was to my left, who was asleep, upright. She was seated next to my head, facing me, with her head resting right on top of my shoulder. Natalie was also asleep, but she was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs and had her head resting right next to mine on the arm rest of the couch.

I looked to the clock in the kitchen. It was two o clock in the morning.

 _What the hell is going on?_

I reached up and tapped Natalie on the leg.

"…hm?... Nick?"

She paused, looking at me. Then she got off her chair, knelt down, and hugged me around the neck.

"I-I was so scared." She released her grip on me. Her movement woke Naomi up.

"N-Nick!" She was next to ensnare me. "I-I'm so sorry about what happened! Are you okay? Do you feel alright?"

Everything was just so confusing.

"Um… guys? What exactly happened?" I asked.

.

 _(With Christmas and New Years coming up, I'm not sure how much writing I'll be able to get done. So, as an early Christmas present, I wrote an extra-long, action-packed chapter, although this is exactly how I intended this chapter to go, it just worked out. Happy Holidays everyone!)_


	11. Chapter 11

_(Hey everyone! So I have some good news, and some bad news. The good news is, I'm officially back from my 'unannounced hiatus', and will hopefully be able to get back into the writing process. Skip passed the italicized text if you want to get straight to the chapter._

 _The bad news comes in two parts, one not as bad as the other. First off, although I'm back, chapters won't be as frequent as they were towards the end of the year last year, mainly because I'm in my last year of high school, and I have a lot of work ahead of me as to of getting into college. So as far as chapters go, with any free time I have, I'm going to work on stories, but there just isn't an established schedule for uploading, at least not until closer to summertime._

 _The second part of the bad news, is really just how I feel. I'm feeling a little… burnt out… when it comes to writing this story. When I first started writing this story, I chose to write about Sayori (this being Natalie) because she seemed to be the easiest character to write about. This may have been obvious, but believe it or not, Natsuki (this being Naomi) is my favorite girl from DDLC. I like all the girls, all of them deserve equal attention in my opinion, but I guess I'm just getting a little tired of writing a story around Sayori (Natalie). That's actually why I incorporated Natsuki (Naomi) to be more of an occurring character into the story, because I almost wanted to shift the story into a Natsuki based story, until I realized this is a Sayori based story. You'll probably notice with more of my recent chapters that my mind was sort of in a Natsuki state, and I started to make Natsuki (Naomi) more involved for the wrong reason, and that was a mistake on my part. Actually, when I wrote the story, I made the Sayori character's name Natalie because it was as close to 'Natsuki' as I could get, and deep down I wanted to feel like I was writing for Natsuki as well as Sayori. Don't ask me why, it was a dumb decision and I can't really figure out why I did it, it just complicated things for myself and you guys, that I'll definitely admit._

 _So in conclusion, what I'm trying to get to is, I'm not going to stop writing this story, and after this chapter, I'm going to recollect myself and start to change the focus back onto Sayori. And, with my own desires in writing, I'm actually going to start a new story, a Natsuki based story. One of the regrets about this story I have is that I made up my own character names, and a lot of times I accidentally confuse myself, so with the new Natsuki story, I'm going to use the original character names, with the exception of the main character having a name so I don't have to refer to him as 'Anon'._

 _Admittedly, my focus will start to shift to the Natsuki story, simply because that's what I really want to do right now. But I know there is some love for this story from lots of people, and that truly warms my heart. So this story won't be completely forgotten, and I'll still try my hardest to write for it, as well as my new one._

 _As soon as I figure out all the details, like the title, draft the first few chapters, and so on, I'll start posting the new story on my profile, so just keep an eye out for it if you'd like to give it a read._

 _If you made it this far, thank you for reading my thoughts, and understanding. This chapter was already written, and was pretty short as I tried to write it in December when I was about to take my break. I'm sorry for the unannounced break and the short chapter, but I'm excited to see what the future holds, and I hope you guys are too. This isn't the end to this story, I promise.)_

 **I do not own Doki Doki Literature Club, nor do I own any of the characters portrayed within this story.**

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"Um… guys? What exactly happened?" I asked.

"You… you don't remember what happened?" Natalie asked, taking on a serious tone.

"No. Not really anyways. I remember being outside with Naomi's dad, and he was trying to make her come home, but that's about it." I said

"You kicked my dad's ass, but he did a cheap shot and pulled a knife on you, and cut you across your core." Naomi said plainly.

"I… I did?" I looked down at the old clothes covering my torso. "I guess that explains this, huh?" I said with a light chuckle.

Both of the girls stared at me.

"What?" I asked.

"How are you taking this so lightly?" Naomi asked.

"I wouldn't say I'm taking it lightly. I just feel relieved that you guys did such a good job of cleaning me up." I said smiling.

Naomi sighed. "Well, after you passed out, we didn't know what to do. So we just winged it."

"Neither of us know how to drive, and we weren't about to carry you all the way to the hospital, we could barely get you on the couch. So we had to do what we could with what we had." Natalie said.

"Why didn't you just call an ambul-"

"No. It would've been too much to explain and been a major headache. Plus, on top of that, I know how much you hate hospitals." Natalie gave me a teasing smirk. She was right though, I do have a pretty bad fear of them. She continued. "We wanted to get you professional help, but what choice did we have?" She asked. "What if they would've asked what happened? You could've gotten in trouble with the police!"

"No, I get it. You guys made the right decision. And you did a hell of a job too." I assured them.

"Seriously? All we did was stop the bleeding with what we assumed was some of your old clothes. It's not like we did anything beneficial!" Naomi said, raising her voice.

"I'm still alive, aren't I? It doesn't even hurt that bad, see?" I tried to sit up, but winced as the burning pain that I had forgotten about set back in.

"Stooopp" Naomi said lightly, pushing me back down by the shoulders. "You seriously need to take it easy for a while." She said, in an uncharacteristically sympathetic tone.

We were quiet for a while in the dark living room, awkwardly trading glances at one another.

"You guys… I really appreciate the help. But you don't have to worry about me. I'll be okay!" I smiled at them.

Natalie scoffed. "A-are you seriously saying that right now?!" She paused, and took a deep breath. "Nick, you're a great guy, but you care too much. You worry about everyone and everything, and don't allow anyone else to worry about you. You devote so much energy into others, but don't think to think about yourself. It's an extremely humble trait, but it hurts you in the long run."

I just stared at her, in disbelief that something so serious could come out of Natalie's mouth. Sometimes I feel like I may take Natalie's efforts for granted.

Naomi looked at her, then at me. She spoke up. "She means, let us worry about you. You may not think it, but you're just as deserving of help than any of us, especially with all that's been going on with us recently. I think I can say for the both of us that you deserve whatever type of help we can give you." She said, smiling at me.

This really isn't like them. I've never seen this side to either of them before. They're acting so… mature.

"Alright… but you guys have to promise me something."

"What is it?" They both said in unison.

"We're telling Marissa and Ada everything." I looked at Natalie. "Natalie, you're telling them about your depression, and what you did." She looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. I looked over to Naomi. "And Naomi, you're telling them about your home issues." She got a nervous look on her face. "I'll tell them about my home issues, and my scuffle with Naomi's dad just to be fair. And on top of all of this, we're telling them we're all living together, because this whole cover up mess is a pain in the butt and could've easily been avoided." I looked at both of them again. "They're our friends, and will only want to help us. I think we've all discovered that with each other on our own."

They looked at each other, and looked back to me.

"I mean, I-I guess that's fair." Naomi said, huffing.

"If it's what you think is okay, then I'll do it." Natalie said.

I smiled. "Thank you, guys. That's a huge weight lifted off my shoulders." I checked the time again, still surprised by how late it was. "You guys should probably be getting to bed. We have school tomorrow and I don't want to make you tired for tomorrow."

"Like hell we are! What if something goes wrong with you in the middle of the night?" Naomi fired at me.

"But I told you I feel fine…" I said.

"We literally just talked about this." Natalie said.

"Okay, okay." I said, holding my hands up, defeated. "But whether I'm able to go or not, you guys are going to school tomorrow, so if you aren't going to sleep upstairs, at least sleep down here on the other couches."

"If you can't go, I'm not going." Natalie said, straightforwardly.

"Y-Yeah, me too." Naomi said.

 _Looks like no matter what, I'm going to school tomorrow. I'm not letting them miss because of me._

"Fiinnee." I said in a dramatically whiny way.

The girls went upstairs to get pillows and blankets. After they came back down, Naomi laid out on the longer couch, and Natalie laid back on the recliner. I noticed they were both staring at me, Watching over my every movement.

I knew if I told them they _didn't_ have to do that, I'd probably just get an ear full from one of them again, so I simply closed my eyes, and tried to get some more sleep.

.

I awoke to a faint voice in my left ear, and some nudges on my shoulder.

"…Hey, you should probably wake up now, dummy."

"Ugh… Naomi? What time is it?" I looked around the room. "Where's Natalie?" I asked, groggily.

"She's in the shower, I'm in charge of you. And like I said, time to wake up." She said. "How're you feeling?"

"Fine, I guess. As you would expect." I slowly got up to a sitting position on the couch, and looked down at my body again. I still had pants on from the scuffle, but my top was off and my torso was covered in the old clothes. I pulled the towel off the top of my head.

"Man, a shower is probably gonna hurt like hell." I said.

"I-I'm… I'm sorry this happened to you. It's all my fault. I should've never even came here and put you in danger…" She said.

"Nonsense. I know you would do the same thing for me. It's the least I could do." I said, giving her a smile.

She looks like she wants to say something, but stays quiet.

"Well, I guess it's time to take a look at the damage." I said, starting to remove the clothes from my torso.

Naomi's face immediately gets red.

"W-what're you doing?! Taking off your clothes in front of a girl!" She says, looking away.

"Well, I had a shirt on before I passed out, and now I don't have one on. You guys clearly took it off earlier, what's the difference now?" I asked, continuing to take them off.

"T-that was different, it was an emergency! We were worried about your health, now this is completely different!" She stammers.

I personally wasn't self-conscious about my body at all. I went to the gym, I ate relatively well, I know what I'm about. I'm not ripped, but I'm fairly toned. The only thing I ever worried about were my scars, but I'm comfortable around Naomi and Natalie.

After I got down to the last layer of clothing, the blood was really dried and stuck to my skin. It hurt to pull it off.

"Ugh, gross. Could you get me a damp warm cloth?" I asked Naomi.

"Y-Yeah, sure!" She ran off to fetch me my request.

When she came back, I gently dabbed the cloth among the lines where the blood was the thickest, and worked the rags off to reveal my recently acquired wound.

It ran from the lower left part of my abdomen all the way up to the upper right part of my chest. And now that it was exposed, man did it burn. Luckily it had already scabbed up well, and I Hadn't done any more damage to it after carefully taking the rags off. The cut was surprisingly deep though.

 _This is going to scar for sure_.

Oh well, scars are nothing new.

"Well, to make the best of a bad situation, at least it looks kinda cool, right?" I asked Naomi.

She was quiet.

"Naomi?" I asked again, looking up to where she was standing.

Naomi stood in the same spot she was, staring at me.

Suddenly, she outstretched her hand towards my chest, slowly. She placed her fingertips on my chest, and slowly ran her hand over the wound.

It stung as she ran her hand over it, but I didn't express that to her. Her hands were slightly cold, and I had never realized how small they really were until now.

"Umm… Naomi?"

She locked eyes with me.

"I…I did this to you…" She said, her voice cracking.

"Naomi, no! We've been over this already." I said.

Her eyes started to get glossy.

I took her hand in mine, she locked eyes with me again, her face getting slightly red.

"You never know what somebody else is going to do, and you can never blame yourself for the consequences of somebody else's actions. I didn't have to fight the guy either. I could've ran inside and just called the police. It's my fault for making a poor decision." I reassured her.

"Well…I am glad you kicked his butt, he deserved it." She said, giggling a little.

I smiled at her, and laughed as well. "I think I'm glad too."

We had only just realized that I was still holding her hand. She withdrew it quickly, and we both blushed.

"I'm out of the shower, for whoever needs to go next!" Natalie called downstairs.

"You go ahead. I'm definitely going to take my time, and I don't want to use up all the hot water on you."

"Alright. Don't do anything stupid and get yourself hurt while I'm gone, Natalie would kill me." She says, as she walks up the stairs.

I smile to myself, and imagine Natalie giving an earful to Naomi and getting into an argument over me. I'm way too lucky to have these girls care about me.

I slowly get up, make my way to the kitchen, and start to prepare breakfast for the girls while they're getting ready for what'll probably be the longest school day of my life.

 _I can't wait…_ I think to myself, imagining the pain it's going to be to for us to explain _everything_ to the literature club later.

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End file.
